'Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs' - Greg Smith Letter

March 14, 2012


Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs


by Greg Smith

TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.

But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.

I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.

When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.

Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave.

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.

Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.

It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.

It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.

These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “muppets,” “ripping eyeballs out” and “getting paid” doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.

When I was a first-year analyst I didn’t know where the bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a derivative was, understanding finance, getting to know our clients and what motivated them, learning how they defined success and what we could do to help them get there.

My proudest moments in life — getting a full scholarship to go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics — have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.

I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.

Ron Paul vs Goldman Sachs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vue8Gs0JWps

Comin' this summer... $5 gas

New York Post

The forecast for the summer driving season: Hit the road early. Not to beat the traffic, but to beat the higher gas prices expected in mid-July.

Goldman Sachs' crystal ball is proclaiming that oil will soon soar to $135 a barrel, and likely have service stations jacking up fuel prices to $5 a gallon in New York just like the summer of 2008 that preceded the recession.

Indeed, analysts say Goldman and the other oil trading giant that also has the might to move prices, JPMorgan Chase, have already placed their energy bets for the summer. JPMorgan predicts oil hitting $130 a barrel in the coming weeks...[Full Article]

Secret Fed Program Gave Billions to Banks Unknown to Congress

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueTgVQkO6YU

Uploaded by fal2grace on May 27, 2011

May 26 (Bloomberg) -- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-26/fed-gave-banks-crisis-gains-on-secre... Credit Suisse Group AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc each borrowed at least $30 billion in 2008 from a Federal Reserve emergency lending program whose details weren't revealed to shareholders, members of Congress or the public. The $80 billion initiative, called single-tranche open-market operations, or ST OMO, made 28-day loans from March through December 2008. Banks paid interest rates as low as 0.01 percent that December, when the Fed's main lending facility charged 0.5 percent. Bloomberg's Bob Ivry discusses the loan program with Deirdre Bolton on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack."

Ex-Goldman Sachs Analyst: “Major War” Coming End Of 2012

Massive conflict will prompt stock market collapse, predicts cycle strategist Nenner

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, March 10, 2011

When cycle forecaster Charles Nenner told the Fox Business network yesterday that the Dow Jones was set to collapse to the 5,000 level on the back of a “major war” that will shake the globe at the end of 2012, hosts David Asman and Elizabeth MacDonald sat in stunned silence.

Nenner, a former technical analyst for Goldman Sachs, is head of the Charles Nenner Research Center, which purports to be able to predict market trends with a computer program based around pattern forecasting and securities analysis. Nenner predicted the stock market and housing collapse over two years before the fall of Lehman Brothers.

Nenner predicts that the Dow is heading down to just 5,000, a gargantuan drop given that it now hovers above the 12,000 level and only sunk as deep as 6,547 during the lowest ebb of the economic collapse in March 2009.

On the back of this forecast, Nenner has advised his clients to vacate the market almost entirely.

“I told my clients and pension funds and big firms and hedge funds to almost go out of the market, almost totally out of the market,” said Nenner, saying that the collapse will unfold over the course of a couple of months and that the reversal will come when the Dow hits just above the 13000 level.

What could prompt such a dramatic fall? An oil shock that could be kick-started by Friday’s “day of rage” protests in Saudi Arabia or something else?

According to Nenner, who studies war and peace cycles, the collapse will be initiated by “a major war starting at the end of 2012 to 2013,” a startling claim to which the host David Asman merely responded, “wow”.

Excuse me? A financial strategist who has been deadly accurate in the past and has just told all his clients to get out of the market predicts a “major war” that will lead to a stock market collapse and the best Asman can come up with is “wow”?

Since the hosts failed to follow up on Nenner’s astounding statement, who this war will be between and how it will start is anyone’s guess, but it seems inevitable that its roots will be in the current unrest we see spreading like wildfire across North African and the Middle East.

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.

Goldman Sachs hires law firm to shut blogger's site

The Telegraph

Goldman Sachs is attempting to shut down a dissident blogger who is extremely critical of the investment bank, its board members and its practices.

The bank has instructed Wall Street law firm Chadbourne & Parke to pursue blogger Mike Morgan, warning him in a recent cease-and-desist letter that he may face legal action if he does not close down his website.

Florida-based Mr Morgan began a blog entitled "Facts about Goldman Sachs" – the web address for which is goldmansachs666.com – just a few weeks ago.

In that time Mr Morgan, a registered investment adviser, has added a number of posts to the site, including one entitled "Does Goldman Sachs run the world?". However, many of the posts relate to other Wall Street firms and issues...[Full Article]

Check out this website...
goldmansachs666.com

Goldman reveals where bailout cash went

Goldman Sachs sent $4.3 billion in federal tax money to 32 entities, including many overseas banks, hedge funds and pensions, according to information made public Friday night.

Goldman Sachs disclosed the list of companies to the Senate Finance Committee after a threat of subpoena from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Ia.

Asked the significance of the list, Grassley said, "I hope it's as simple as taxpayers deserve to know what happened to their money."

He added, "We thought originally we were bailing out AIG. Then later on ... we learned that the money flowed through AIG to a few big banks, and now we know that the money went from these few big banks to dozens of financial institutions all around the world."...

[Full Article]

Goldman Sachs warns on global economic slowdown

Fresh fears over a global economic slowdown were raised on Saturday after Goldman Sachs' chief economist warned that data from China and the US revealed that any recovery was facing a "challenging period" and that evidence from America was "troubling".

As Britain enters a self-imposed period of austerity to deal with an historically large budget deficit, Jim O'Neill, one of the world's foremost economists, said that events beyond our shores could pose more of a problem than any domestic economic problems.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Mr O'Neill, head of global economic research at Goldman, said: "What is clear is that a persistently struggling US, in addition to a major disappointment in China, would not be good news for the rest of us."...

[Full Article]

BP Aware Of Cracks In Oil Well Two Months Before Explosion

Former BP Chairman and current BP CEO both dumped stocks in weeks before disaster

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, June 17, 2010

BP was aware of cracks appearing in the Macondo well as far back as February, right around the time Goldman Sachs and BP Chairman Tony Hayward were busy dumping their stocks in the company on the eve of the explosion that led to the oil spill, according to information uncovered by congressional investigators.

The Mining and Mineral Services agency released documents to Bloomberg indicating that BP “was trying to seal cracks in the well about 40 miles (64 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast,” according to the report.

The fissures, which BP began to attempt to fix on February 13, could have played a role in the disaster, though this is a question still being explored by investigators. Improperly sealed, the cracks cause explosive natural gas to rush up the shaft.

“The company attempted a “cement squeeze,” which involves pumping cement to seal the fissures, according to a well activity report. Over the following week the company made repeated attempts to plug cracks that were draining expensive drilling fluid, known as “mud,” into the surrounding rocks,” states the report.

As we previously highlighted, eyewitness evidence indicates that Deepwater Horizon managers knew that the BP oil rig had major problems before its explosion on April 20. A crew member who rescued burning workers on the rig told Houston attorney Tony Buzbee of a conversation between Deepwater Horizon installation manager Jimmy Harrell and someone in Houston. According to the witness, Harrell was screaming, “Are you fucking happy? Are you fucking happy? The rig’s on fire! I told you this was gonna happen.”

The fact that BP managers were aware of problems with the rig and were seemingly unconcerned about fixing them only lends more weight to the already startling indications of some having foreknowledge of the disaster.

As we highlighted last week, on page 37 of British Petroleum’s own investigative report into the oil spill, it is stated that the Hydraulic Control System on equipment designed to automatically seal the well in an emergency was modified without BP’s knowledge sometime before the explosion.

Highly suspicious stock and share trades by people connected to BP before the explosion indicate some extent of foreknowledge.

Goldman Sachs dumped 44% of its shares in BP Oil during the first quarter of 2010 – shares that subsequently lost 36 percent of their value, equating to $96 million. The current chairman of Goldman Sachs is Bilderberg luminary Peter Sutherland, who is also the former chairman of British Petroleum.

Furthermore, as reported by the London Telegraph on June 5th, Tony Hayward, the current BP CEO sold £1.4 million of his shares in the fuel giant weeks before the spill.

On April 12th, just over one week before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, Halliburton, the world’s second largest oilfield services corporation, surprised some by acquiring Boots & Coots, a relatively small but vastly experienced oil well control company.

Halliburton is named in the majority of some two dozen lawsuits filed since the explosion by Gulf Coast people and businesses who claim that the company is to blame for the disaster.

Halliburton was forced to admit in testimony at a congressional hearing last month that it carried out a cementing operation 20 hours before the Gulf of Mexico rig went up in flames. The lawsuits claim that four Halliburton workers stationed on the rig improperly capped the well.

Goldman Sachs Sold $250 Million Of BP Stock Before Spill

Firm's stock sale nearly twice as large as any other institution; Represented 44 percent of total BP investment

The brokerage firm that's faced the most scrutiny from regulators in the past year over the shorting of mortgage related securities seems to have had good timing when it came to something else: the stock of British oil giant BP.

According to regulatory filings, RawStory.com has found that Goldman Sachs sold 4,680,822 shares of BP in the first quarter of 2010. Goldman's sales were the largest of any firm during that time. Goldman would have pocketed slightly more than $266 million if their holdings were sold at the average price of BP's stock during the quarter.

If Goldman had sold these shares today, their investment would have lost 36 percent its value, or $96 million. The share sales represented 44 percent of Goldman's holdings -- meaning that Goldman's remaining holdings have still lost tens of millions in value...

[Full Article]

Obama Administration: Goldman Sachs From Top To Bottom

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
May 16, 2010

Two articles on the FDL website detail the intimate and incestuous relationship between the Barry Obama administration and Goldman Sachs. FDL names names and provides expansive detail on the Goldie administration.

“At a time when Congressional hearings are set to call testimony from some Goldman Sachs employees, it is vital to understand how widespread that institution’s ties are to the Obama administration. This diary shows the pervasive influence of Goldman Sachs and Goldman created institutions (like the Hamilton Project embedded in the Brookings Institution), employees and influence peddlers in the Obama administration,” FDL wrote on April 27.

It is not simply Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, Rahm Emanuel, Gary Gensler and Mark Patterson who are Goldies, but a long list of others. “But that’s just the tip of the Goldman Sachs iceberg. Here you will find, I believe, the most comprehensive list of people-groups yet available to show how Obama’s administration has really become the Goldman Sachs administration.”

Elena Kagan is merely the latest addition, although her ties to Goldman are downplayed if not completely ignored by the corporate media...

[Full Article]

Obama's Supreme Court Pick Is A Bankster Operative

Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
Monday, May 10, 2010

Democrats are going gaa-gaa over Obama’s Supreme pick Elena Kagan. “Democrats praised Kagan as ‘razor sharp’ and impeccably qualified for the lifetime appointment on the nine-member bench, but Republicans promised to vigorously vet a ’surprising’ choice, noting she had never been a judge,” reports Agence France-Presse. “I have selected a nominee who I believe embodies… excellence, independence, integrity and passion for the law, and who can ultimately provide that same kind of leadership on the court,” Obama said at the White House.

Is Kagan independent? Hardly. She is a bankster operative.

Kagan sat on a Goldman Sachs advisory council between 2005 and 2008. It was her job to offer “analysis and advice to Goldman Sachs and its clients.”...

[Full Article]

Why the Fed Likes Independence

Last week it was revealed that when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve, he urged AIG officials not to disclose to the Securities Exchange Commission relevant details of agreements with banks to bail out Goldman Sachs. Apparently he felt at the time that regulators and the public would be angry that taxpayer money was used to fully compensate bankers who made some horrifically bad investment decisions. These banks should have suffered the consequences of the huge risks they were taking. After all, they kept plenty of rewards when times were good. Instead, the Fed found a way to socialize these major losses so these banks could survive and continue making more bad decisions, at the expense of the American people and the value of the dollar...