He Said A Wordy Dird

For the record, Goldman Sachs called it a "shitty deal" first in their own e-mail. Also, for the record, Carl Levin is made of Awesome and Win.

Chairman Carl Levin, to the delight of the crowd at the hearing of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, continually repeated a descriptive, colorful word typically left out of family newspapers that was used by a top Goldman executive to describe a deal it made for clients.

The security, named Timberwolf I, a collateralized debt obligation of other CDOs that were based not on actual home mortgage bonds but instead on those bonds' movements, was referenced in a June 22, 2007, email from one Goldman senior executive, Tom Montag, to another, Dan Sparks. Sparks is testifying today before Levin's panel.

In his email, Montag remarked of the Timberwolf I deal, "[B]oy, that timeberwof [sic] was one shitty deal."

Levin used the word "shitty" 11 times -- eliciting multiple rounds of quiet giggles -- in questioning Sparks, the former head of Goldman's mortgage department, about why Montag would describe it as "shitty," how long they had known it was "shitty," and whether they knew the deal was "shitty" when they peddled it to clients.

C-SPAN3.  Because you never know what'll happen next.

In all seriousness, this one's classic.  Good for Levin calling them out with their own e-mail.