« March 23, 2012 | Main | April 2, 2012 »
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Gnome-o-gram: Goldman Sachs Meets a Muppet
In Greg Smith's op-ed in the New York Times, “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs“ he says that in the last twelve months of his employment at that firm, he had heard five managing directors call their clients “muppets”. Well, one thing Goldman people should be aware of is that muppets are near-immortal, and never forget. I was a customer of the vampire squid from 1985 through 2011, when I abandoned Goldman Sachs, moving my account outside their tentacles. Since it's been a year, and Goldman is still held by some people in less than the utter contempt they deserve, I thought I'd share with you my “exit interview” on 2011-03-18 with the latest team who had parachuted in from London to manage my account after the previous people had been fired. Now note, the folks you're hearing from here are not Joe stockbroker, but the Managing Director/General Manager of Goldman Sachs Bank Switzerland, Marco Pagliara, and the person he designated to be my account representative, Roberto Plaja, Executive Director, Private Wealth Management. This is almost an hour long, but there is some hilarity to reward your persistence if you come to this with the right kind of disposition and a topped-off tank of cynicism, which I trust will be refilled as you listen. I have bleeped the names of blameless people chucked into the tree chipper by Goldman for daring to value their customers' interests over those of the London derivatives pedlars, and personal details which are none of your business. As is noted at the beginning, this recording was made with the explicit permission and knowledge of all parties involved, with a digital audio recorder which sat in the middle of the table during this conversation. I hereby place it in the public domain.Download/play MP3 audio file.
Posted at
23:57
