E-mails show Goldman boasting as meltdown unfolds

FILE - In this April 22, 2010 file photo, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, left, and company president Gary Cohn, center, attend President Barack Obama's speech in New York's Cooper Union college. E-mails released by a Senate committee investigating the financial crisis show top executives at Goldman Sachs Inc. boasting about money the firm was making as the housing market collapsed in 2007. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — E-mails released Saturday morning show top executives at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. boasting about the money the firm was making as the national housing market collapsed in 2007.

The e-mails suggest Goldman benefited from its bets that securities backed by subprime mortgages would lose value. The messages seem to contradict previous statements by the investment bank that it lost money on the securities.

“Of course we didn’t dodge the mortgage mess,” CEO Lloyd Blankfein wrote in an e-mail dated Nov. 18, 2007, according to the e-mails released Saturday by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. “We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts.”