however, cnbc has learned that a top paulson official, paolo pellegrini, told executives that they intended to short the portfolio. they asked him about a meeting with laura schwartz -- "did you tell her that you were

john paulson was approaching 50 years old as was paolo pellegrini, jeffrey green, the playboy investorout in california. he was approaching 50. so there's something to be said for having that experience are at least having someone in your firm with some of that experience, too often some of the firms i think on the street don't have those kind of people with that kind of expense. a lot of things move and come in and you have to have patience. and that's not exactly a virtue that is rewarded at many firms on the street. again, a lot of competition and, you know, things change slow. and it really did come it took years. it's a myth that people weren't bearish on housing and were worried about housing. my brother has written about some of those kind of issues and documented, they're all kinds of people who bet against housing in 2003, 2004, and they got burned. some who could hold on ended up doing really well and making a lot of money. that it's hard to when we're in a world where it's much easier to be compared and compare yourself against others, your other managers or other investment

paolo pellegrini, according to a source close to him, told attorneys that paulson struck only one so-called bespoke or subsidized collateralized obligation with goldman sachs that a neutral third party or collateral collection agent. paulson did one of the deals in question with goldman, but this is the only one that had that neutral third party, which is central to the allegation of fraud in this case. in addition, pellegrini told investigators that paulson approached other banks about doing such a deal, but the since-failed aca was the only cdo manager who agreed to do this sort of security deal. cnbc has also learned new details on how paulson selected the subprime securities that were part of the larger cdo. according to pellegrini's interview with government officials, the criteria were deal sized first, average fico score and percentage of adjustable rate mortgages, all mortgages written in a certain time frame. as the complaint says, paulson initially proposed 123 deals and aca threw out 55. paulson then expanded the time frame for when the mortgages were written to find more deals a

however, cnbc has learned that a top paulson official, paolo pellegrini, told executives that they intended to short the portfolio. they asked him about a meeting with laura schwartz -- "did you tell her that you were interested in taking a short position with abacus?" pellegrini says "yes, that was the purpose of the meeting." they said we look forward to presenting a complete and accurate evidentiary record in court. it is possible that the government has other evidence contradicting this testimony in which the aca claims it did not know of paulson's short position. and pellegrini walks away from the testimony, saying he doesn't remember specifically telling her, however, adds "it would have been a little difficult to sort the miss the fact that we were trying to short this stuff." pellegrini also told investigators that he shared with aca the out lines in how it selected the subprime securities that did was looking for mortgages with low fica scores and high loan-to-value ratios. the government's case is substantially about goldman's failure to disclose the role of paulson in shorting th