Corzine questions Goldman case

Former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) questioned the federal fraud case against Goldman Sachs, the investment firm he once ran.

"It looks like a thin legal case to me," Corzine told The New York Times. "You had people identified as suitable customers. Ultimately, it's an issue of whether you wanted to be in synthetic C.D.O.'s."

The Wall Street firm, where Corzine was CEO in the late 1990s, faces federal charges that it failed to disclose necessary information to investors looking at its real estate security project that it had actually bet against.

Corzine, also a former senator, showed some sympathy toward current Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who was recently grilled by senators about his role in the marketing of the security now being scrutinized by the government.

"You had a prosecutor's mentality in terms of how the senators acted," Corzine said of Blankfein's Senate hearing. "The committee has a mentality and a mandate to discover wrongdoing."

Former President Bill Clinton has also questioned the federal case against Goldman, suggesting that consumers looking at the security had access to the needed information.