<p>Not a surprise but…he said it out loud.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all?src=tp[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all?src=tp</a></p>
<p>Wow! Not said, but it feels like an indictment as to the moral tone of business culture, as it is more widespread than just GS.</p>
<p>Sadly I believe this is true in many big investment companies and is a big part of the reason the economy melted down in 2008. Greed and wrong values in the “trusted” financial sector. Honest regulation is clearly needed, but in this age of crony capitalism, unlikely to happen or be effective.</p>
<p>Nice to see someone have the ■■■■■■■ to quit.</p>
<p>About time someone up there in the echelon of this biz spoke up…it has been going on for decades…</p>
<p>Kudos to Greg Smith; I wish him all the best in his future endeavors…</p>
<p>A MUST read for anyone going into the business…imo</p>
<p>I could take a stand too if I had my millions safely in the bank. </p>
<p>This has become the culture in almost ALL big business . </p>
<p>Step in, slash and burn or promise the world, make the stock go up and move on to the next job. No one has any reason to stick around and see the carnage they create. </p>
<p>The business model is no longer about long term best interest for any business or employee.</p>
<p>I work for a large successful business service company and truly believe we have a very positive culture. Not all businesses are that nasty.</p>
<p>Agreed, it is easy to leave and beotch about the firm when you have lined your pockets with the ill-gotten gains to which you criticize…Perhaps Mr Smith should donate his savings to some of the 99%ers…</p>
<p>Goldman began its “slide” once Corzine got on top. Traders ruled, since they brought in the big bucks from "principal trading’ (i.e., for Goldman’s own money). The genteel investment bankers, who spent eons of time with companies and truly enjoyed their clients and cared about them, would get a good deal, maybe, once every few years. There wasn’t enough money in that or in conventional “client service” (helping someone out now with time and effort – uncompensated – on the expectation of a deal down the road). The trader mentality brought a income statement to the end of each day – that’s not long-term relationship or long-term thinking. Further, many “clients” were necessarily on the other side of the traders trading: think about interest rate swaps, where Goldman pays the client a fixed amount per year in exchange for the client paying a floating amount. If interest rates increase, the client pay more in floating rate interest and Goldman makes money. Is that bad? Not necessarily – both parties made a bet and it paid off for the one and not the other. But you can see that Goldman was on the other side – an adversary, if you will – of the trade. Later, of course, the big banks started making big money on “principal transactions,” where they used those seemingly underemployed client relationship bankers to find and buy companies for the house account, often snatching them from their own clients! Thus, even genteel investment banking also transformed itself into a business where the client(s) became adversaries. I am sure there there remain pockets of banking where clients and banker trust one another, but it is very rare since clients no longer pay much at all for anything unless a gun is figuratively held to their heads (as in a merger deal or something).</p>
<p>I am a muppet!
I liked the article. I am a Wall Street veteran (not a GS alum though). My firms were not entirely like GS, but there were some similarities.<br>
I am now on the buy side, so I see a lot of the firms. GS is in a class by itself in many respects and we take pricing and terms from them that we would not from others in return for excellent client coverage, research, technology, operations strength, etc. I will be having a conversation with my coverage guy about the article! I would love to be a fly on the wall at GS today.
Good for the author! I am sure he is already financially set for life,though, so I have no worries for his career!</p>
<p>Simply put ,GS lost its way once it became a public company</p>
<p>I"m waiting for the Times to print the mea (actually,… eorum) culpa letters from other businesses, but I’m not holding my breath. :)</p>
<p>In a free market, making a lot of money over a long period of time is probably a sign that you’re doing things reasonably well for your customers.</p>
<p>Not when the customers are muppets. Way too many still actually trust GS and like the fancy dinners and suites at football games.</p>
<p>Did somebody just suggest this is a free market economy? </p>
<p>When the top 10 CEOs of the top finance companies are meeting in private with the Fed chairman and head of the NY Fed at midnight to decide what to do with the economy during times of crises? It is highly doubtful you are operating a free market economy.</p>
<p>But, I’m not even going to get into it. Too nice outside today. ;)</p>
<p>It’s time for us muppets to rise up and cut those strings ;)</p>
<p>more on this on dtsark’s thread <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1300420-so-economy-getting-better-13.html?highlight=dstark[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1300420-so-economy-getting-better-13.html?highlight=dstark</a>
(starts on p. 11)</p>
<p>I think everyone is missing the real story. The author won a bronze medal for table tennis in the Maccabiah Games. </p>
<p>To recap:</p>
<ol>
<li> A bronze.<br></li>
<li> For table tennis. </li>
<li> In the Maccabiah Games. </li>
<li> Boom.</li>
</ol>
<p>monydad - welcome back. I was wondering what it would take for you to post again.
I guess I wasn´t so wrong when I first called you moneydad.</p>
<p>D1 is not at GS. She has few good friends who are working there as analyst, and they have asked D1 if she could pass their resumes around at her firm. I don´t know why they are not happy at GS, but I know D1 feels good about where she is, even though she is working from 7:30 - 12 most days.</p>
<p>Many moons ago, when I worked at the other white shoe firm, we were required to do full disclosure on when a security could have a negative return. I still remember the MD telling us that we wanted to do repeat business with our customers. It was the age when electronic trading wasn´t as prevalent, there was a lot more relationship building between sales people and clients. If a customer wanted a price/yield table, they couldn´t just look at it up on BB or any electronic platform, he/she would have to call up his/her favorite salesperson to get the information. Once electronic trading started, pricing became very transparent, customers began to trade with which ever firm that would give them the best pricing (they no longer had to do business with their favorite salesperson), and firms started to cut back on those commissions (production credit), everything just became less personal. I maybe over thinking it, but I think it´s the personal, human interation we have that keeps us in check sometimes with our proper behavior (or empathy) toward each other.</p>
<p>C’mon - this is nothing new.</p>
<p>GS and all the others have long known that the best way to keep the $$ coming in was to keep their clients paying fees for “services”; and this was peanuts once they the regs were loosened so that could start trading for themselves and make even more $$, often at times against the best interest of their clients.</p>
<p>These firms would put together CDOs (when they knew the fundamentals of the RE market was shaky and on a downward path) for hedge funds (like Magnetar), convince their clients to buy into these “safe investments” even while knowing that Magnetar was betting against these CDOs.</p>
<p>Really not much diff. from those “analysts” (many who became household names) who kept pushing dot.com companies even though they full well knew that they were garbage.</p>
<p>Wall St. is simply now just a big legal Ponzi scheme.</p>
<p>And similar type of changes have happened to the legal, medical and accounting professions as well.</p>
<p>Prisons are full of criminals who discover religion as soon as they are locked up. Did this member of the den of thieves discover his moral compass? Pluzzzhe! Why did he join GS a decade ago? To do Mother Teresa’s work? Serve humanity? Just as the thousands of CC kids plan an education as a springboard to a career in IB it is ALL about money and prestige. And why Stanfood, Emmayttee, Haahhvaad are the nec plus ultra for the 2300 SATers who were disciplined towards success.</p>
<p>If you want to look for a problem, look at the title of the author and his age and career length. A bunch of kids years out of college playing with billions and looking at Gekko as their hero.</p>
<p>And now he wants to expose the other side of the game parlor? Yeah right!</p>