NYT Dealbook: A Romance With Risk That Brought On a Panic
Although Mr. Corzine had been a United States senator, governor of New Jersey, co-head of Goldman Sachs and a confidant of leaders in Washington and Wall Street, he was at heart a trader, willing to gamble for a rich payoff.
Yet few appeared willing to check Mr. Corzine’s trading ambitions.
The review of his tenure also sheds new light on the lack of controls at the firm and the failure of its watchdogs to curb outsize risk-taking. The board, according to former employees, signed off on the European bet multiple times. And for the first time it is now clear that ratings agencies knew the risks for months but, as they did with subprime mortgages, looked the other way until it was too late, underscoring how three years after the financial crisis, little has changed on Wall Street.
