Lloyd Blankfein: Shut Up, Already

There is no way Goldman Sachs is going to win their case in the court of public opinion with their current PR approach. The latest move by the firm is to send CEO Chairman Lloyd Blankefein on the show of  softball throwing Charlie Rose.

How much of a softball thrower is Rose?

When Treasury Secretary Geithner was put under new handlers and sent out into the world to redo his damaged image, his new handlers sent him for his first interview to the safe confines of Rose's studio.

It's a tough place to get into trouble. The tone deaf Blankfein probably didn't do too much additional damage, although he did manage to make this idiotic statement about Wall Street:

You could call it a casino, but if it is, it’s a very socially important casino.

At times the interview turned into a kind of therapy session where Blankfein discusses his weaknesses:

Goldman Sachs must improve communication with the public, Blankfein said.

“That’s a huge challenge, I would just say it’s my deficiency,” he said.

Ah, no kidding Lloyd. We had that figured out when you told FT you were doing "God's work". You have shifted a bit seeing you now consider Wall Street a casino, but Lloyd isn't there a local chapter of Toastmaters where you could work out your communications problems, instead of practicing with Goldman Sachs' reputation on the line?

Who the hell is prepping Blankfein? Blankfein is not the type, clearly, to be coming up with allusions on his own to God, casinos and crap tables. I'm thinking that Lucas van Praag is not a long-term survivor as head of PR at Goldman.

If Goldman wants to survive, they have to stop sending Blankfein on these nutty kamikaze missions. There are 32,000 f'ing employees at Goldman. They need to find a sob story. Find someone at Goldman like a 37 year old female single mother, whose husband died in the WTC attack. Show her wrangling a trade to get an extra oil supertanker into a New Jersey port just in time for Memorial Day that will mean lower oil prices for East Coast travelers. Put that on TV.That's how you get people to understand what the honest side of Goldman does.


Lloyd use your head for something else besides keeping your nose at a 180 degree angle to the ground.

Is Goldman About to Buckle and Settle Charges?

The big swinging dicks apparently don't have the balls to match.

Word from NyPo is that "Goldman Sachs may soon settle its fraud case with the SEC, opting to end the legal fight rather than endure a repeat of the public flogging it received Tuesday in Washington."

If this in fact is true, it indicates another blunder that will paint Wall Street in a bad light when it is really a Goldman Sachs problem, and not a Wall Street problem. 

Further, from a legal perspective any securities lawyer (outside of the SEC) will tell you that the SEC has no case.

If Goldman settles now, it indicates another tactical error by Goldman. They should have foreseen the negative publicity that the charges would bring and have had a full court press public relations campaign, with people who know how to present these things, in every nook and cranny of the news media. That they didn't, and still don't, points to a public relations failure of the first order. 

Outside of strategically leaking voicemails to the media, they haven't done anything right. And the communications disaster is not something that started with the SEC suit. It has been on-going from the time MSM  got wind of the fact that former-Goldman people were crawling all over the U.S. government and governments around the world. This should have been presented and promoted by Goldman as executives leaving big money to "serve" the world, never to return to Goldman big money. "We give Goldman people, who are very smart and talented people, the opportunity to make extremely good money, so that ultimately money does not become a concern and they can use that freedom after they leave Goldman to advance their pet projects, be it advancing freedom, intellectual curiosities, whatever."

That this theme was not promoted is at the core of Goldman's problem. To the man on the street, Goldman is just a bunch of evil bastards, doing evil 24 hours a day. And while Goldman does do enough evil that were  the Goldman perpetrators to confess, it would keep a bunch of pedophile priests so occupied in confessionals that they wouldn't have time for the kids,  Goldman also does do some fundamental Wall Street work that sadly is beginning to be associated with Goldman evil doing, when it is nothing of the type.

The best thing that could happen for Wall Street is for a volcano to erupt under Goldman's headquarters and the entire bunch of them turn into particles of ash that perhaps delay air flights over America for a week.


A less desirable, though next best alternative, would be for Lloyd Blankfein and Goldman PR chief Lucas van Praag be bounced from Goldman, and replaced by people who understand what Wall Street is about and want to make money the old fashion way by earning it and not by playing footsie with the government to the degree that crooked politicians are embarrassed to be seen in their presence.