Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Goldman CEO as Hypocritical, Commie, Oligarch

Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, has attacked some investment banking products as socially useless and said that the controversy over bankers’ pay was both understandable and appropriate, in a speech to the Handelsblatt banking conference in Frankfurt.

He did not comment on the "social" usefulness of his new townhouse with its 12 car garage.

Blankfein said that multi-year bonuses should be outlawed and senior staff should receive large proportions of pay in stock, rather than cash. Top executives should be forced to hold the bulk of that stock until retirement, he said.

He did no comment on the degree to which he and Henry Paulson have already cashed out of stock. He did not mention the self-serving nature of his comments on multi-year bonuses given that Goldman has spurned multi-year bonus guarantees at a time when rivals have been hiring aggressively using such promises.

Blankfein also supported the call for global regulatory reform , but did not mention that the man heading up global reform is a former Goldman managing director.

In short, when an investment banker starts talking about social usefulness, assume his firm just bought a publishing house that has a warehouse full of Chairman Mao little red books that he needs to blow out, before the firm is repackaged for an IPO..

5 comments:

  1. Wenzel,

    The earlier post you linked to says it was John Mack who bought the townhouse with the 12-car garage.

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  2. Thanks, all these oligarchs look alike after awhile.

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  3. Probably the outfits they wear, you know, black on black with a woman's stocking pulled over the head and a money bag slung over their shoulder.

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  4. Here is another bo's welfare queen buffet!

    http://www.zerohedge.com/article/warren-buffett-endorse-speculative-trading-regulation

    ReplyDelete