The Wall Street Tattler

Posted on by

Gordon C. Stewart               March 15, 2012

How could he do this? Is Greg Smith a tattler? Or, perhaps, Judas?

How could one of Wall Street’s own go to the New York Times (“Why I am leaving Goldman Sachs”) to publicly denounce the company’s culture?  “He just took a howitzer and blew the entire firm away,” said Larry Doyle of Greenwich Investment Management.“ (“Wall Street Exec Quits with Public Broadside).

According to the LA Times article, Goldman Sachs’ CEO Lloyd Blankfein suggests that Mr. Smith – Golman’s executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.- is a “disgruntled employee.” William Cohan, author of Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World, says that “there are lots of disgruntled people who leave Wall Street, and they don’t do this” (i.e. open their mouths.) “What I’m hearing (on Wall Street),” said Cohan, “is sour grapes. You just pigged out at the trough for 12 years and you don’t have enough sense to keep your mouth shut.” (underlining mine)

Keeping one’s mouth shut is the name of the game on Wall Street.

Conscience may have its place so long as you keep it to yourself. You can have a conscience on Wall Street, just don’t exercise it. You’re part of an elite gang. Whether on the Street corners of impoverished neighborhoods like Watts in LA and Bedford-Styvesant in NYC, or in the center of crony capitalism that is Wall Street, gang members don’t rat on other gang members. If you don’t like it, swallow hard and keep your mouth shut.

Goldman’s rebuttal to Mr. Smith’s statement -“It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping off their clients,” referring to their own clients as Muppets – hardly has the ring of strong denial. “We disagree with the views expressed, which we don’t think reflect the way we run our business.”

Hmmm. “…don’t think…”? Why not “don’t”?

It’s a rare thing for a spokesperson for a corporation with the best legal counsel in the world to say anything than a flat-out denial. “We don’t think” sets up the issue as a matter of perception, not fact. It’s Goldman’s perceptions of itself versus Mr. Smith’s disgruntled perception.

Mr. Smith’s refusal to live by the Wall Street gang code of conduct will lead to a barrage of attacks on his character calculated to divert the public’s attention from an institution that eats people’s investments and life savings to the Judas who is without integrity.

Goldman understands that for most of us the world is personal, not institutional. We don’t like tattlers and turn-coats, disgruntled employees who never learned the lesson of kindergarten that you never tattle on your friends. You don’t go running home to tell momma. Part of the code of the playground is not to tell.

What’s even more unusual in this case is that Greg Smith dealt in derivatives. Remember them? Derivatives – a complicated form of financial market gambling so convoluted that even the people who manage them can’t explain how they work – were at the center of the Wall Street meltdown in 2008. They were legal then. They are legal now. Goldman Sachs and the rest of the Wall Street gang of crony capitalism are still calling the shots with the highest paid Washington lobbyists money can buy.

Greg Smith is a Wall Street Judas who betrayed his gang not with a kiss but with a howitzer.

How could he do this? Why didn’t the guy who ate at the pig trough for 12 years just kiss and say good-bye? Why did he make his money and then break the code?  Unless…unless…unlike so many of those who were taught not to tattle, Greg Smith couldn’t live with himself and decided not to run home to tell momma but to run to the New York Times. He’ll never again be allowed on the playground.

5 thoughts on “The Wall Street Tattler”

  1. OK, so I just re-read the NYT piece, and I thought, That’s IT? That’s a “Howitzer?” Pretty tame stuff. Investment “advisors” only care about making money for themselves. That’s basically all it says. That’s “stirring the pot?!?!”

    Nothing about the legions of working poor whose lack of financial savvy was exploited, who were dazzled, bamboozled, or outright lied into mortgages the brokers *knew* they couldn’t afford. Nothing about the human misery resulting from buying perfectly profitable businesses and forcing out loyal workers, some of them just shy of qualifying for their pensions, to squeeze out an extra 1 or 2 percent. Nothing about any of that. Of course, this stuff isn’t relevant to “the best interests of the client,” is it?

    I can’t help thinking of the story of Zaccheus, who came to realize all the wrong he’d done and promised to repay anyone he’d defrauded FOURFOLD. When Mr. Smith does something like that, then I’ll take him seriously. In the meantime…not so much. (Of course if he is sincerely repentant he may do something like that without publicizing it, in which case, well, good for him.)

    Like

    Reply ↓

    • I couldn’t agree more. i wonder whether Mr. Smith has a sense for the larger issues, but chose to target only one, or whether he is clueless about the rest. An old sermon critic told me early in my ministry, “You missed me this morning. Get rid of the shotgun. I only get what you’re saying when you use a rifle.” Greg Smith’s piece was a single shot from the rifle: “Do not trust us. Goldman Sachs is taking your money and laughing at you while it take you for a ride!” Single point. And remember…gang members aren’t supposed to snitch.

      The story of Zaccheaus is SO fitting here. Great to have you post that here so others can see that it’s not just blabber mouth preachers who connect the dots between the biblical stories and the current news that continue to repeat them. Peace, Tony. Thank you.

      Like

      Reply ↓

  3. I read his essay, and just nodded. The unethic of greed and materialism that has gripped this nation is so destructive and immoral, so unChristian. It breaks my heart. My heart crumples even more at the “christians” who support that unethic.

    What the Wall Street Gang (good metaphor) is doing to Smith is the same thing the Bush/Cheney Gang did to Richard E. Clarke and Paul O’Neill. They both told us that Iraq was completely a setup based on lies. The B/C Gang went after them, attacking everything about them, from their integrity to their sanity. That’s what political gang’s do when they have nothing factual or true to stand on.

    I remember when the news reported that Enron staffers laughed about cheating elderly folks out of their last penny for bogus energy costs. The majority of American citizens do not want to admit that such people are in places of power, prestige and wealth in this country. I know I don’t. But I believe it is true.

    I clipped a copy of a Wall Street Journal column, written by one of their regular guys, Al Lewis. The title is “Psychos on Wall Street.”

    Lewis refers to an article from CFA Magazine, a trade publication for chartered financial analysts. That article says that one out ten people working on Wall Street are psychopaths. The estimate came from researchers, including a psychologist who treats Wall Street professionals.

    Here is the definition of psychopath/sociopath provided in the article: “…a range of anti-social traits, including a lack of empathy, no regard for consequences and unbridled risk-taking.” They don’t get, or don’t care to get, right and wrong.

    Lewis says he has “come to know many psycopaths. . . They are always charming and narcissistic. They display wonderfully glib senses of humor and spin the truth like a roulette wheel.”

    I believe those figures. If they weren’t sociopaths/psychopaths, more of them would follow Smith.

    BTW, I read something in the Strib about people turning away from Wall Street/Big Money jobs because the stench is becoming too great. GOOD!!

    Like

    Reply ↓

Leave a comment