"I'm Doing God's Work" Meet Mr Goldman Sachs

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ne...article6907681.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1

<B>I'm doing 'God's work'. Meet Mr Goldman Sachs</B>
The Sunday Times gains unprecedented access to the world's most powerful, and most secretive, investment bank

Number 85 Broad Street, a dull, rust-coloured office block in lower Manhattan, doesn’t look like a place to stop and stare, and that’s just the way the people who work there like it. The men and women who arrive in the watery dawn sunshine, dressed in Wall Street black, clutching black briefcases and BlackBerrys, are very, very private. They walk quickly from their black Lincoln town cars to the lobby, past, well, nothing, really. There’s no name plate on the building, no sign on the front desk and the armed policeman stationed outside isn’t saying who works there. There’s a good reason for the secrecy. Number 85 Broad Street, New York, NY 10004, is where the money is. All of it.

It’s the site of the best cash-making machine that global capitalism has ever produced, and, some say, a political force more powerful than governments. The people who work behind the brass-trim glass doors make more money than some countries do. They are the rainmakers’ rainmakers, the biggest swinging dicks in the financial jungle. Their assets total $1 trillion, their annual revenues run into the tens of billions, and their profits are in the billions, which they distribute liberally among themselves. Average pay this recessionary year for the 30,000 staff is expected to be a record $700,000. Top earners will get tens of millions, several hundred thousand times more than a cleaner at the firm. When they have finished getting "filthy rich by 40", as the company saying goes, these alpha dogs don’t put their feet up. They parachute into some of the most senior political posts in the US and beyond, prompting accusations that they "rule the world". Number 85 Broad Street is the home of Goldman Sachs.

The world’s most successful investment bank likes to hide behind the tidal wave of money that it generates and sends crashing over Manhattan, the City of London and most of the world’s other financial capitals. But now the dark knights of banking are being forced, blinking, into the cold light of day. The public, politicians and the press blame bankers’ reckless trading for the credit crunch and, as the most successful bank still standing, Goldman is their prime target. Here, politicians and commentators compete to denounce Goldman in ever more robust terms — "robber barons", "economic vandals", "vulture capitalists". Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Treasury spokesman, contrasts the bank’s recent record results — profits of $3.2 billion in the last quarter alone — and its planned bumper bonus payments with what has happened to ordinary people’s jobs and incomes in 2009.

It’s even worse in the US. There, Rolling Stone magazine ran a story that described Goldman as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money". In his latest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore drives up to 85 Broad Street in an armoured Brinks money van, leaps out carrying a sack with a giant dollar sign on it, looks up at the building and yells: "We’re here to get the money back for the American people!"

Goldman’s reputation is suddenly as toxic as the credit default swaps and other inexplicably exotic financial instruments it used to buy with glee. That’s bad for the one thing it values more than anything else: business. Being the prime target for popular and political outrage could put Goldman first in line for draconian new regulation. So it has, reluctantly, decided that the time has come to speak out, to fight its corner. That’s how, on one of those bright autumnal New York mornings when anything seems possible — even an invitation to break bread with the masters of the universe — I find myself walking past the security guard who held up Michael Moore and into the building with no name.

"Aha! You catch us plotting in real time," says Lloyd Blankfein, breaking away from a cabal of senior executives discussing his trip to Washington the previous day. Blankfein, 55, Goldman’s chairman and chief executive, is wearing a grey suit with a jaunty Hermès tie with little red bicycles on it. In his hand, he’s carrying one of those cups of coffee that look bigger than the human stomach. Maybe it’s the caffeine, maybe it’s the tie — a birthday present from his daughter — but he’s in a remarkably jolly mood for a man everyone seems to hate. "It’s like a safari here," he jokes. "You’ve come in to look at the animals." .......... continues here...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ne...article6907681.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1

 

don't envy others. You would be the ceo of goldman sachs if you could. It is simply his karma to be that rich.

don't envy others just live your own life and focus on yourself.

 

Blankfein: I am not bullish on gold.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,650289,00.html

 

I think that wins comment of the year on Elite Trader
I wouldn't like to think what he'll be reincarnated as in his next life if he believes in Karma, a rectal parasite?

 

At first glance I read 'Godfather's work'

They made an offer the US government couldn't refuse.

 

i agree, the original God had some epic m&a skills

 

It's not a case of envy. Anyone who thinks they are doing "God's work" where the aquisition of physical possessions is involved is delusional and extremely narcissistic. I would view someone such as Mother Teresa or Gandhi as doing "God's work." Blankfein's comments are offensive and highly insulting.

 

exactly. that he would make such a quip to a reporter doing a story on GS just show him to be a pompous narcissist who lives in his own little world, completely divorced from the chumps in the real world, where GS view themselves as the master race' (oh, irony). chinese wall my ass. trading (where the majority of their profits come from)= god's work. ummm, ok. what even remotely normal human being could make such a comment with a straight face- hell, with any face...

i hasten to add that if those of us on this site who are actually profitable traders were to have the unfair advantages at our disposal that GS traders do, we'd be profitable all but 1 day a quarter also. the casino analogy in the article is apt: GS knows what every player has in their hand and they also know what the house's hole card (govt policy) is. wouldn't make us genius traders, it would make us cheats. in kind, the difference would be that we'd be arrested and charged. no chinese wall defence...

 

Pretty funny sketch about GS on saturday night live the other night. GOOGLE it.

 

wow - religions had it all wrong all this time. There are stories of Wall St companies taking clients to strip clubs. Must be God's work too.

This is the biggest sales challenge of all - get God over on your side making $$$. Maybe there is a wager on who can be successful at pulling it off. $1.00 Winthorp?