GSAMP Trust 2007 NC1

That's the name of a bond produced by Goldman Sachs that is now the subject of litigation in which Goldman finds itself as a defendant.  The plaintiffs are US Government lawyers.  They are involved not in their role as regulators or prosecutors (that's a whole other story) but because large slices of the bond had been purchased by Fannie Mae which had to be bailed out by the Feds.  That gave the Federal government a large ownership stake in Fannie Mae and standing to litigate this issue.

An article in today's New York Times provides some valuable context for all of this.  The "bond" in question contained 9393 subprime mortgages originated by New Century (that's what the NC at the end of the bond's name comes from).  Of those mortgages, half have already been foreclosed, another quarter are underwater, and the final quarter have already been modified.  I have no idea if any of the mortgages in this bond are recorded at this registry but I do know that our index has a great many entries for "New Century" so even if we don't have any from this pool, there are or were plenty of others.

Now it's nearly six years since the bursting of the real estate bubble.  It seems that most of the country wants to just move on and forget all that happened.  In Federal courtrooms around the country, however, lawyers will be fighting about who is responsible for the losses sustained for many years to come.  Publicizing such lawsuits is important since that might be the only way anyone will be held accountable for what happened.