Rolling Stone? Rolling Stone!? Can't they just stick to Usher and John Mayer?
Is it us, or does Goldman Sachs suddenly seem…touchable?
Through the subprime meltdown and credit crisis, Goldman seemed like the one firm that was untouchable. The masters of the masters of the universe. The hedge funds melted down. Bear Stearns disappeared. Lehman Brothers disappeared. Citigroup was saved only by the grace of Uncle Sam. Financial carnage tore apart Wall Street. Goldman endured. Nobody or no thing could lay a glove on them.
But lately it seems like some blows are landing.
First, there was the Mike Taibbi article in Rolling Stone, a ruthless take-down of the investment bank, in which he characterizes it as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity” (and several other things that can’t be printed in a family blog.) The long piece outlines how Goldman has gotten itself on both sides of several asset bubbles, making money from the both the upside and downside, and remained largely untouchable.
What’s really surprising is that Goldman actually responded to it. They issued a statement calling the article a ”hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories” and added the only ones he missed were the Kennedy killing and faking the moon landing.
If you think your critics are just plain crazy, the best thing to do is ignore them; why fuel that fire? Whether Tiabbi’s assertions are true or not, they felt that one down on Broad Street.
Then there was the more recent revelation that a former employee, Sergey Aleynikov, stole software code related to Goldman’s proprietary trading systems. And then, Goldman’s name mysteriously disappeared from the NYSE’s rankings of program trading, a list it usually tops. It turned out to be just a mistake on the exchange’s part unrelated to the theft, which was real enough, but the combination led to some wild speculation that the theft could even take Goldman down.
Make no mistake, Goldman is still the guy in the $2,000 Armani suit. But for the first time, that looks like a furrow in his brow.
July 7, 2009
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