Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein Heads to Capitol Hill

April 26, 2010— -- Late today, the opening salvo from Goldman Sachs on the eve of what's expected to be a grilling of Goldman's CEO, Lloyd Blankfein.

In remarks prepared for delivery Tuesday to the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, Blankfein will first thank taxpayers for the bank bailout, noting that Goldman has paid it all back with interest.

Blankfein will also talk about the day the SEC charged his bank with duping investors, allegedly selling toxic mortgages purposely bundled to fail.

"It was one of the worst days in my professional life," Blankfein will say in remarks prepared to deliver Tuesday.

And while Blankfein will strongly disagree with the SEC, he will say: "I also recognize how such a complicated transaction may look to many people. To them, it is confirmation of how out of control they believe Wall Street has become..."

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, said Monday there is no doubt Goldman was selling short, based on thousands of pages of documents they have obtained.

"I think they're misleading the country. ... There's no doubt they made huge money betting against the [mortgage] market," Levin said.

"You'll be able to hear a pin drop on the New York Stock Exchange," during Tuesday's hearing said Duff McDoland, author or "Last Man Standing." "In a symbolic sense … we're putting him and stocks in the town square," for all to see.

Born in the Bronx and raised in a Brooklyn housing project, Blankfein rose through the ranks on the rough-and-tumble side of Wall Street, a take-no-prisoners trader.

Surviving tomorrow's interrogation on Capitol Hill comes next.

"These are guys who fight for their income every hour of every day," says McDonald about Blankfein and his peers, "And he's prepared to do it again."

But Blankfein will have to explain e-mails from inside Goldman Sachs about his bank betting against the mortgage market.

"Sounds like we will make some serious money," wrote one executive.

Blankfein himself wrote, "We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts."

And Blankfein asked in another e-mail, "… should we have cleaned up these books before.. .and are we are doing enough right now to sell off cats and dogs..."