Washington: Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein said he has not thought about resigning amid accusations the firm helped inflate the housing bubble and then made billions off the market's collapse.
Blankfein was asked in an ABC interview aired on "Good Morning America" on Wednesday whether it had ever crossed his mind to resign.
"No it hasn't," he replied. The Goldman executive underwent a blistering cross-examination from lawmakers during an 11-hour Senate hearing on Tuesday about the firm's practices.
"We are all citizens and family people and taxpayers and members of our community. I think Washington has a responsibility to respond to the events of the last several years by enacting some kind of financial reform," Blankfein told ABC.
But he added that he thought Goldman was "getting some disproportionate treatment." Senator Carl Levin, who had roundly criticised Goldman during the hearing, told ABC: "What was really the problem is that they made a heck of a lot of money in the wrong way and in an unfair way at the expense of taxpayers."
Republican Senator Susan Collins said she had not been satisfied with the answers from Goldman executives at the hearing. "They were truthful in a sense, but they also tried to avoid answering whenever they could," Collins said on NBC's "Today" show.
"And most of all I was struck by the fact that they did not take responsibility for their actions nor did they acknowledge their conflicts of interest."
Comments
0 comment