{"id":3579,"date":"2009-10-14T22:35:45","date_gmt":"2009-10-14T22:35:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=3579"},"modified":"2009-10-14T22:35:45","modified_gmt":"2009-10-14T22:35:45","slug":"a_credibility_p","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=3579","title":{"rendered":"A credibility problem for Goldman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/cms\/s\/0\/bb9b743e-b8f3-11de-98ee-00144feab49a.html\">John Gapper<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>It will be business as usual for Goldman Sachs this morning. The bank will annoy a lot of people.<br \/><Br><br \/>\nGoldman, the institution that came through last year\u2019s financial crisis best \u2013 arguably the only pure investment bank left standing \u2013 will say how much money it made in the third quarter (a lot) and how many billions it has stored for bonuses (about $5.5bn towards a likely 2009 bonus pool of $23bn).<br \/><Br><br \/>\nFor believers in Goldman\u2019s ethical standards and way of doing business, these are difficult times. Although it avoided the mistakes that brought down Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, forced Merrill Lynch into Bank of America\u2019s arms, and prodded Morgan Stanley further into lower-risk retail broking, Goldman has become a whipping boy.<br \/>\n<br \/><Br><br \/>\nThere is outrage that, having taken government money to survive the crash, Goldman is in such rude health that it will hand out billions in bonuses. Matt Taibbi, a Rolling Stone writer, caught the mood memorably by describing Goldman as \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/politics\/story\/29127316\/the_great_american_bubble_machine\">a giant vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity<\/a>\u201d.<br \/>\n<br \/><Br><br \/>\nSuch is Goldman\u2019s importance to Wall Street and regulation that I am devoting a pair of columns to it. Today, I will discuss the Goldman problem (different and less egregious to what Mr Taibbi believes, but still a problem). Next week, I will suggest what should be done about it by regulators and the bank itself.<br \/>\n<br \/><Br><br \/>\nGoldman executives were wounded by how seriously Mr Taibbi\u2019s piece was taken despite their riposte that vampire squids are small creatures that present no danger to humanity. He accused it of profiting from bubbles such as the US internet and housing booms, and of repeatedly \u201cselling investments they know are crap\u201d to retail investors.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/cms\/s\/0\/bb9b743e-b8f3-11de-98ee-00144feab49a.html\">John Gapper<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>It will be business as usual for Goldman Sachs this morning. The bank will annoy a lot of people.<br \/><Br><br \/>\nGoldman, the institution that came through last year\u2019s financial crisis best \u2013 arguably the only pure investment bank left standing \u2013 will say how much money it made in the third quarter (a lot) and how many billions it has stored for bonuses (about $5.5bn towards a likely 2009 bonus pool of $23bn).<br \/><Br><br \/>\nFor believers in Goldman\u2019s ethical standards and way of doing business, these are difficult times. Although it avoided the mistakes that brought down Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, forced Merrill Lynch into Bank of America\u2019s arms, and prodded Morgan Stanley further into lower-risk retail broking, Goldman has become a whipping boy.<br \/>\n<br \/><Br><br \/>\nThere is outrage that, having taken government money to survive the crash, Goldman is in such rude health that it will hand out billions in bonuses. Matt Taibbi, a Rolling Stone writer, caught the mood memorably by describing Goldman as \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/politics\/story\/29127316\/the_great_american_bubble_machine\">a giant vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity<\/a>\u201d.<br \/>\n<br \/><Br><br \/>\nSuch is Goldman\u2019s importance to Wall Street and regulation that I am devoting a pair of columns to it. Today, I will discuss the Goldman problem (different and less egregious to what Mr Taibbi believes, but still a problem). Next week, I will suggest what should be done about it by regulators and the bank itself.<br \/>\n<br \/><Br><br \/>\nGoldman executives were wounded by how seriously Mr Taibbi\u2019s piece was taken despite their riposte that vampire squids are small creatures that present no danger to humanity. He accused it of profiting from bubbles such as the US internet and housing booms, and of repeatedly \u201cselling investments they know are crap\u201d to retail investors.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,39,33,35,9,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3579"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}