Welcome to the Goldman Firestorm

From the NY Times' Dealbook: "....Even before the critical opinion piece on Goldman, it was always going to be an uphill battle for Mr. Siewert.

Goldman has been in the cross hairs of both Main Street and Washington ever since the financial crisis, having been painted — fairly or not — as the exemplar of Wall Street greed, excess and double-dealing. Exhibit A: the Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit accusing the investment bank of selling toxic mortgage products to its customers that the bank itself was betting against.

But now criticism of Goldman is flaring up from within the firm. Greg Smith, a head of the United States equity derivatives business based in London, wrote in his opinion piece in The Times that the bank treated its customers with no regard, disparaging them internally as “muppets.”

Managing the fallout from Mr. Smith’s letter will require some serious P.R. skills. It will also require Mr. Siewert, who only recently accepted the offer from the investment bank, to get to know Goldman’s culture firsthand. Mr. Siewert, who will be a managing director at the firm, will report to John F.W. Rogers, Goldman’s chief of staff.....

Read the rest at http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/welcome-to-the-goldman-firestorm/?nl=business&emc=dlbkpma3_20120314