From Barron's Editiorial: "I'm shocked, shocked!" to paraphrase Louis Renault, the French prefect in Casablanca, who professes surprise at the existence of gambling at Rick's Café, as he collects his winnings. To think that unethical behavior goes on in Wall Street, especially since dealings there are supposed to put the customer first!
That is the gist of what amounts to the exit interview from an ex-Goldman Sachs vice president, one Greg Smith, who asserted in an op-ed piece in Wednesday's New York Times that he was quitting the firm dubbed by its critics as the "vampire squid" because of the alleged declines in the Wall Street powerhouse's ethics. When the 30-something Smith joined as a summer intern, Goldie had the reputation of putting clients first, he wrote. But in the past decade, its culture degenerated into an amoral strategy of how much it could wring out of its customers, he contended. And so Smith said he was washing his hands of this dirty business.
As if Wall Street's greedy thrust for the maximum profits is something new. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's chief executive, may have famously asserted that the firm was doing "God's work" as bankers. But it wasn't for nothing that Jesus threw the money changers from the temple nearly two millennia ago…..
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