Working Life

  If I was Lloyd Blankfein and you told me that I could pockets hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation, play a key role in a scam that cost millions of people their jobs, sent the economy into one of the worst economic tailspins in a half century, escape any personal jail time for […]

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    Even investors are now starting to distance themselves from Goldman Sachs: After reports on Thursday evening that federal prosecutors had opened an investigation into trading at Goldman, raising the possibility of criminal charges against the Wall Street giant, the firm’s stock was downgraded on Friday by two analysts. Standard & Poor’s lowered its rating […]

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   And the next shoe to drop: Federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into whether Goldman Sachs Group Inc. or its employees committed securities fraud in connection with its mortgage trading, people familiar with the probe say. The investigation from the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office, which is at a preliminary stage, stemmed from a […]

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   The Senate hearings made clear: Goldman Sachs—and other Wall Street firms—profited by gambling with the American peoples’ livelihoods. It was a classic “heads I win, tails you lose” scam. As Sen. Carl Levin memorably stated: “You knew it was a shitty deal, and that’s what your emails showed.”     But, what Levin and other […]

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   Over the weekend we learned this: In late 2007 as the mortgage crisis gained momentum and many banks were suffering losses, Goldman Sachs executives traded e-mail messages saying that they were making "some serious money" betting against the housing markets.   The e-mails, released Saturday morning by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, appear […]

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   I will have a lot more to say next week about the whole executive compensation issue and how it fits into the larger picture of our economy. But, for today, I think we should not get too excited about this news: Bowing to calls for restraint in tough economic times, Goldman said that its […]

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   This caught my eye this morning: Some of the largest shareholders in Goldman Sachs Group Inc. have urged the Wall Street firm to reduce the size of its bonus pool, arguing that it should pass along more of its blockbuster earnings to investors, according to people familiar with the situation. The investors hold tens […]

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   I do not think it was a coincidence that Goldman Sachs announced its drop-in-the-bucket $500 million fund to help small businesses yesterday. Because the most important news is a report issued by the government bailout inspector that says Goldman got a huge gift from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, led at the […]

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    If you are wondering whether the culture of greed on Wall Street–a culture that led to the cratering of the economy just a year ago and the loss of millions of jobs for regular Americans–I present to you news about Goldman Sachs, which will quickly remind us that very little is changing.   Things […]

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   It is a failure of the rule of law and accountability that many of the bankers and financiers still have their jobs and, in fact, are not sitting in jail or defending their behavior in court. But, it is even more revealing when you read the following, via The Financial Times today: Lloyd Blankfein, […]

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