Andrew Ross Sorkin (Sorta) Defends Blankfein On Perjury Accusations

Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote an interesting piece on the accusations that have been leveled against Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein that he perjured himself in congressional testimony regarding the investment bank's positioning in the mortgage market prior to the collapse. Blankfein told the committee that “we didn't have a massive short against the housing market.” According to research done by Sorkin, Blankfein's assertion may be kind of, sort of, true, but it comes down to semantics - what constitutes a "massive short position?"

Sorkin was able to unearth some inconsistencies and mistakes in the Senate subcommittee's report on the firm's activities. Essentially, these inconsistencies may back up the assertion inside Goldman that the entire fiasco is "political theater," but more than likely they were honest mistakes. Furthermore, they aren't that egregious anyway when taken in context with the entirety of the report. The conclusion that Sorkin comes to is that the real size of Goldman's net short position in the residential mortgage market may have been around $5 billion.

This is where the semantics come in. Is that a "massively short position?" As Robert L. Roach, a counsel and chief investigator for the Senate subcommittee who helped draft the report said, "It's about how you define ‘massive' and ‘large' — and I'm not trying to be cute.” While all of this Lloyd Blankfein perjury stuff is quite interesting, I still think it is largely irrelevant, and Lloyd Blankfein has Got To Go!