All The Devils Are Here: Unmasking the Men Who Bankrupted the World (2 page)

Steve Van Solkema
Analyst who worked for Cioffi and Tannin.

Fannie Mae

Jim Johnson
CEO from 1991 to 1998. Perfected Fannie’s take-no-prisoners approach to regulators and critics.

Daniel Mudd
CEO from 2005 to 2008.

Franklin Raines
CEO from 1999 to 2004. Forced to step down over an accounting scandal.

Goldman Sachs

Josh Birnbaum
Star trader who specialized in the ABX index.

Lloyd Blankfein
Current CEO.

Craig Broderick
Current chief risk officer.

Gary Cohn
Current president and COO.

Jon Corzine
Senior partner who convinced the partnership to go public. Replaced by Hank Paulson within days of the IPO.

Steve Friedman
Co-head of Goldman Sachs with Robert Rubin.

Dan Sparks
Head of the Goldman mortgage desk from 2006 to 2008.

Michael Swenson
Co-head of the structured products group under Sparks.

John Thain
Co-COO under Paulson until 2003.

Fabrice Tourre
Mortgage trader under Sparks. Later named as a defendant in the SEC’s suit against the company.

David Viniar
CFO.

J.P. Morgan

Mark Brickell
Lobbyist who fought derivatives regulation on behalf of J.P. Morgan and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. President of ISDA from 1988 to 1992.

Till Guldimann
Executive who led the development of Value at Risk modeling and shared VaR with other banks.

Blythe Masters
Derivatives saleswoman who put together J.P. Morgan’s first credit default swap in 1994.

Sir Dennis Weatherstone
Chairman and CEO from 1990 to 1994.

Merrill Lynch

Michael Blum
Executive charged with purchasing a mortgage company, First Franklin, in 2006. Served on Ownit’s board.

John Breit
Longtime Merrill Lynch risk manager who specialized in evaluating derivatives risk.

Ahmass Fakahany
Co-president and COO under CEO Stanley O’Neal.

Greg Fleming
Co-president—with Fakahany—until O’Neal’s resignation in 2007.

Dow Kim
Head of trading and investment banking until 2007.

David Komansky
O’Neal’s predecessor as CEO.

Jeffrey Kronthal
Oversaw Merrill’s mortgage trading desk under Kim. Fired in 2006.

Dale Lattanzio
Chris Ricciardi’s successor as the leader of Merrill Lynch’s CDO business.

Stan O’Neal
CEO from 2002 to 2007. Created the culture that allowed the buildup of Merrill Lynch’s massive exposure to securities backed by subprime mortgages.

Tom Patrick
CFO under Komansky and executive vice chairman under O’Neal. Seen as O’Neal’s ally until O’Neal fired him in 2003.

Chris Ricciardi
Head of Merrill’s CDO team from 2003 to 2006. While at Prudential Securities in the mid-1990s, worked on one of the first mortgage-backed CDOs.

Osman Semerci
Installed as global head of fixed income, reporting to Kim, in 2006. Fired in 2007.

Arshad Zakaria
Head of global markets and investment banking. Considered a close ally of O’Neal until forced out in August 2003.

Moody’s

Mark Adelson
Longtime Moody’s analyst and co-head of the asset-backed securities group whose skepticism was at odds with Brian Clarkson’s vision for the agency. Quit in 2000.

Brian Clarkson
Co-head of the asset-backed securities group who aggressively pursued market share. Named president in 2007.

Eric Kolchinsky
Managing director in charge of rating asset-backed CDOs. Oversaw the rating process for John Paulson’s Abacus deal.

Raymond McDaniel
CEO.

Larry Fink
Devised the idea of “tranching” mortgage-backed securities to parcel out risk. Underwrote some of the first mortgage-backed securities for First Boston in the 1980s. Later founded BlackRock and served as a key government adviser during the financial crisis.

David Maxwell
Fannie Mae’s CEO from 1981 to 1991. Important player in the early days of mortgage securitization.

Lew Ranieri
Salomon Brothers bond trader who helped invent the mortgage-backed security in the 1980s.

Attorneys General

Prentiss Cox
Head of the consumer enforcement division in the Minnesota attorney general’s office from 2001 to 2005.

Tom Miller
Iowa attorney general who fought predatory lending.

Eliot Spitzer
New York State attorney general from 1999 to 2006.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Brooksley Born
Chair of the CFTC from 1996 to 1999. Attempted to increase oversight of derivatives dealers.

Wendy Gramm
Chair of the CFTC from 1988 to 1993.

Michael Greenberger
Director of the CFTC’s division of trading and markets under Born.

United States Congress

Richard Baker
Louisiana congressman who introduced a bill to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 1999.

James Bothwell
Author of two key General Accounting Office reports, one criticizing Fannie and Freddie and the other calling for regulation of derivatives.

Charles Bowsher
Head of the GAO from 1981 to 1996. Bothwell’s ally.

Phil Gramm
Chairman of the Senate banking committee from 1989 to 2003. Opposed regulation of derivatives. The “Gramm” in Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the law that abolished the Glass-Steagall Act.

Jim Leach
Chair of the House banking committee from 1995 to 2001. Criticized Fannie and Freddie. The “Leach” in Gramm-Leach-Bliley.

Department of Housing and Urban Development

Andrew Cuomo
HUD secretary from 1997 to 2001. Crossed swords with Jim Johnson. Increased Fannie and Freddie’s affordable housing goals.

Armando Falcon Jr.
Director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight from 1999 to 2005. Outspoken critic of Fannie and Freddie, the two institutions his office was charged with regulating.

Jim Lockhart
Director of OFHEO from 2006 to 2008.

Department of the Treasury

John Dugan
Comptroller of the currency starting in 2004.

Gary Gensler
Former Goldman executive who became assistant Treasury secretary under Robert Rubin. Testified in favor of Baker’s bill. Current chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

James Gilleran
Director of the Office of Thrift Supervision from 2001 to 2005.

John “Jerry”
Hawke Comptroller of the currency from 1998 to 2004.

Henry “Hank” Paulson Jr.
Treasury secretary from 2006 to 2009. Previously chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs.

John Reich
Director of the OTS from 2005 to 2009.

Robert Rubin
Treasury secretary from 1995 to 1999. Previously co-chairman of Goldman Sachs.

Bob Steel
Undersecretary for domestic finance in 2006. Former Goldman vice chairman brought to Treasury by Paulson.

Larry Summers
Treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001. Rubin’s deputy before that. Along with Rubin and Alan Greenspan, the third member of “the Committee to Save the World.”

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

Sheila Bair
Current chair of the FDIC. Assistant Treasury secretary for financial institutions from 2001 to 2002.

Donna Tanoue
Chair of the FDIC from 1998 to 2001.

Federal Reserve

Ben Bernanke
Chairman of the Federal Reserve starting in 2006.

Timothy Geithner
President of the New York Federal Reserve from 2003 to 2009.

Edward “Ned” Gramlich
Federal Reserve governor from 1997 to 2005. Longtime head of the Fed’s committee on consumer and community affairs under Alan Greenspan.

Alan Greenspan
Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006.

Securities and Exchange Commission

Christopher Cox
Chairman from 2005 to 2009.

Arthur Levitt
Chairman from 1993 to 2001.

Michael Burry
California hedge fund manager who began shorting mortgage-backed securities in 2005.

Robert Gnaizda
Former general counsel of the public policy group Greenlining Institute who called for scrutiny of unregulated lenders.

Greg Lippman
Deutsche Bank mortgage trader. One of the few Wall Street traders to turn against subprime mortgages early on.

John Paulson
Hedge fund manager who made $4 billion buying credit default swaps on subprime mortgage-backed securities.

Andrew Redleaf
Head of the Minneapolis-based hedge fund Whitebox Advisors. Used credit default swaps to short the subprime mortgage market in 2006.

Josh Rosner
Former Wall Street analyst who grew skeptical of the housing boom. Published a research paper entitled “A Home without Equity Is Just a Rental with Debt” in 2001.

ABCP:
Asset-backed commercial paper. Very short-term loans, allowing firms to conduct their daily business, backed by mortgages or other assets. Part of the “plumbing” of Wall Street.

ABS:
Asset-backed securities. Bonds comprising thousands of loans—which could include credit card debt, student loans, auto loans, and mortgages—bundled together into a security.

AIG:
American International Group.

ARM:
Adjustable-rate mortgage.

CDOs:
Collateralized debt obligations. Securities that comprise the debt of different companies or tranches of asset-backed securities.

CDOs Squared:
Collateralized debt obligations squared. Securities backed by tranches of other CDOs.

CFTC:
Commodities Futures Trading Commission. Government agency that regulates the futures industry.

CSE:
Consolidated supervised entities. An effort by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2004 to create a voluntary supervisory regime to regulate the big investment bank holding companies.

FCIC:
Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Commission charged by Congress with investigating the causes of the financial crisis.

FDIC:
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Government agency that insures bank deposits and takes over failing banks. Also plays a supervisory role over the banking industry.

FHA:
Federal Housing Administration.

GAO:
General Accounting Office. Government agency that conducts investigations at the request of members of Congress.

GSEs:
Government-sponsored enterprises. Washington-speak for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.