It may be a tough day before a Senate investigatory subcommittee today for officials at Goldman Sachs, who will be answering questions about their company's actions leading up to the 2008 Wall Street Collapse.

"Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs were not simply market-makers, they were selfinterested promoters of risky and complicated financial schemes that helped trigger the crisis," said Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), who will be chairing today's hearing.

"They bundled toxic mortgages into complex financial instruments, got the credit rating agencies to label them as AAA securities, and sold them to investors," said Levin, charging that Goldman then bet against those same items, "profiting at the expense of their clients."

In an internal email released by Levin's panel last week, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told associates that his company "didn't dodge the mortgage mess."

"We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts.  Also it's not over, so who knows how it will turn out ultimately," Blankfein wrote on a Sunday in late November of 2008.

"We didn't have a massive short against the housing market, and we certainly did not bet against our clients," Blankfein will tell Senators.

The Committee has also released other emails among Goldman officials from October 2008 that said things like "Yea we are well positioned," and "Sounds like we will make some serious money."

Much of that came because of Goldman's efforts to sell what were bad packages of mortgages to customers, and at the same time, go short in the housing market, making money as their own investors lost big cash.

"These e-mails show that, in fact, Goldman made a lot of money by betting against the mortgage market," said Sen. Levin.

Blankfein, the Goldman CEO, won't get to give the initial testimony at this hearing, as he is down on the third panel of the day, behind former and current Goldman employees and senior executives.

The hearing comes a day after the Senate gridlocked on Wall Street Reform legislation, as no Republicans switched over to join with Democrats on a test vote, preventing the Senate from beginning official debate on the reform package.