Post by unlawflcombatnt on Mar 22, 2012 11:50:33 GMT -6
If there was ever any doubt that Mayor Bloomberg was a plutocratic Corporatist shill, it was removed yesterday by his defense of Goldman Sachs.
from Marketwatch
Bloomberg Defends Goldman Sachs
March 21, 2012
by John Friedmann
"Why did Greg Smith’s New York Times op-ed so enrage Bloomberg L.P.’s editorial staff?
On March, 14, the New York Times published a piece written by the disgruntled Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) veteran. He all but shouted from the rooftops that Wall Street’s most iconic investment bank had lost its moral compass. Read Greg Smith’s New York Times op-ed about Goldman Sachs.
Memorably, Smith stuck the knife in deeper by revealing that bankers didn’t always have their clients’ best interests at heart and even got their kicks by calling clients “muppets,” of all things.
The piece attracted more than 3 million page views on the Times’s website (NYSE:NYT) by the afternoon of publication. Smith touched a nerve in the zeitgeist.
Harrumph, answered Bloomberg’s editors.
Bloomberg, whose specialty is financial news, dismissed the notion that Smith had cleansed his soul in public. Instead, the company’s editors seemed somehow offended that a man of Smith’s intelligence and experience couldn’t connect the dots and conclude that Goldman existed to make money.
Many news outlets sought to discredit Smith. A writer for Forbes.com labeled his exit as “gratuitously opportunistic,” for instance. The naysayers mocked his accomplishments and ignorance to the practices at Goldman that he decried. Read Forbes piece on Greg Smith’s salvo.
Still, no media outlet blasted Smith more forcefully (or sarcastically) than Bloomberg. whose commentary carried this blunt-as-a-spoon headline: “Yes, Mr. Smith, Goldman Sachs Is All About Making Money: View.” Read Bloomberg column on Smith’s op-ed.
Bloomberg lampooned Smith as being clueless, suggesting that “It must have been a terrible shock when Smith concluded that Goldman actually was primarily about making money.”
Ouch.
And there was this nugget, too: “Apparently when Greg Smith arrived at Goldman Sachs almost 12 years ago, the legendary investment firm was something like the Make-A-Wish Foundation — existing only to bring light and peace and happiness to the world.”
Double ouch.
Leaving no stone unturned, Bloomberg even makes fun of Smith’s record. He wrote in his piece of joining Goldman as an intern in college and being “selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video.”
Bloomberg’s comment about his legacy: “And what an employee!”
Shooting the messenger
True, the financial crisis sweeping the United States hit home to all of us, but Occupy Wall Street served the purpose of shining a light on the financial industry. The global “Occupy” movement excoriated Wall Street for being greedy beyond the pale. From these broadsides, America was divided into the 1% of the haves and the 99% of the have-nots.
Enter Greg Smith, six months later, making Goldman look like the poster child for all that is wrong with Wall Street. In his essay, Smith made Gordon Gekko look like a wimp by comparison.
So, why did Bloomberg’s editors make such a fuss, anyway? As a former employee of the company, I have some ideas.
Perhaps its editorial writer felt genuinely insulted by Smith’s apparent gesture of piousness and felt that the former Goldman employee was exploiting the situation. If Smith was so freaked out by Goldman’s greed, why the heck did it take the guy 12 years to see the light, right?
Maybe there’s some sour grapes. I’d be pretty ticked off if I got “scooped” by the New York Times.
Or...
Could Bloomberg be acting in the interests of the parent company Bloomberg L.P? After all, its founder, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is himself a distinguished veteran of Wall Street.
Mayor Bloomberg, who didn’t throw his support behind the Occupy Wall Street protesters last year, visited Goldman’s headquarters to give the firm a pat on the back after Smith’s manifesto hit. Read “Goldman, Bloomberg and crony capitalism.”
“The mayor stopped by to make clear that the company is a vital part the city’s economy, and the kind of unfair attacks that we’re seeing can eventually hurt all New Yorkers,” Stu Loeser, a spokesman for hizzoner, pointed out.
Loeser failed to mention that Goldman is a prominent part of the financial community which pays dearly to use the trademark Bloomberg terminals. These are coveted machines which offer finance-industry professionals and others a dizzying array of data and information about all kinds of financial instruments.
You’d have to figure that the sales staff of Bloomberg L.P. would prefer not to alienate the Goldman Sachs brass and risk seeing such a prized client embrace a competitor such as, say,Thomson Reuters (NYSE:TRI) .
In its post-op-ed editorial, Bloomberg had the option of blasting either Smith or Goldman Sachs.
Meanwhile, the critics were much quicker to discredit Smith personally than his message.
You can connect the dots. "
from Marketwatch
Bloomberg Defends Goldman Sachs
March 21, 2012
by John Friedmann
"Why did Greg Smith’s New York Times op-ed so enrage Bloomberg L.P.’s editorial staff?
On March, 14, the New York Times published a piece written by the disgruntled Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) veteran. He all but shouted from the rooftops that Wall Street’s most iconic investment bank had lost its moral compass. Read Greg Smith’s New York Times op-ed about Goldman Sachs.
Memorably, Smith stuck the knife in deeper by revealing that bankers didn’t always have their clients’ best interests at heart and even got their kicks by calling clients “muppets,” of all things.
The piece attracted more than 3 million page views on the Times’s website (NYSE:NYT) by the afternoon of publication. Smith touched a nerve in the zeitgeist.
Harrumph, answered Bloomberg’s editors.
Bloomberg, whose specialty is financial news, dismissed the notion that Smith had cleansed his soul in public. Instead, the company’s editors seemed somehow offended that a man of Smith’s intelligence and experience couldn’t connect the dots and conclude that Goldman existed to make money.
Many news outlets sought to discredit Smith. A writer for Forbes.com labeled his exit as “gratuitously opportunistic,” for instance. The naysayers mocked his accomplishments and ignorance to the practices at Goldman that he decried. Read Forbes piece on Greg Smith’s salvo.
Still, no media outlet blasted Smith more forcefully (or sarcastically) than Bloomberg. whose commentary carried this blunt-as-a-spoon headline: “Yes, Mr. Smith, Goldman Sachs Is All About Making Money: View.” Read Bloomberg column on Smith’s op-ed.
Bloomberg lampooned Smith as being clueless, suggesting that “It must have been a terrible shock when Smith concluded that Goldman actually was primarily about making money.”
Ouch.
And there was this nugget, too: “Apparently when Greg Smith arrived at Goldman Sachs almost 12 years ago, the legendary investment firm was something like the Make-A-Wish Foundation — existing only to bring light and peace and happiness to the world.”
Double ouch.
Leaving no stone unturned, Bloomberg even makes fun of Smith’s record. He wrote in his piece of joining Goldman as an intern in college and being “selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video.”
Bloomberg’s comment about his legacy: “And what an employee!”
Shooting the messenger
True, the financial crisis sweeping the United States hit home to all of us, but Occupy Wall Street served the purpose of shining a light on the financial industry. The global “Occupy” movement excoriated Wall Street for being greedy beyond the pale. From these broadsides, America was divided into the 1% of the haves and the 99% of the have-nots.
Enter Greg Smith, six months later, making Goldman look like the poster child for all that is wrong with Wall Street. In his essay, Smith made Gordon Gekko look like a wimp by comparison.
So, why did Bloomberg’s editors make such a fuss, anyway? As a former employee of the company, I have some ideas.
Perhaps its editorial writer felt genuinely insulted by Smith’s apparent gesture of piousness and felt that the former Goldman employee was exploiting the situation. If Smith was so freaked out by Goldman’s greed, why the heck did it take the guy 12 years to see the light, right?
Maybe there’s some sour grapes. I’d be pretty ticked off if I got “scooped” by the New York Times.
Or...
Could Bloomberg be acting in the interests of the parent company Bloomberg L.P? After all, its founder, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is himself a distinguished veteran of Wall Street.
Mayor Bloomberg, who didn’t throw his support behind the Occupy Wall Street protesters last year, visited Goldman’s headquarters to give the firm a pat on the back after Smith’s manifesto hit. Read “Goldman, Bloomberg and crony capitalism.”
“The mayor stopped by to make clear that the company is a vital part the city’s economy, and the kind of unfair attacks that we’re seeing can eventually hurt all New Yorkers,” Stu Loeser, a spokesman for hizzoner, pointed out.
Loeser failed to mention that Goldman is a prominent part of the financial community which pays dearly to use the trademark Bloomberg terminals. These are coveted machines which offer finance-industry professionals and others a dizzying array of data and information about all kinds of financial instruments.
You’d have to figure that the sales staff of Bloomberg L.P. would prefer not to alienate the Goldman Sachs brass and risk seeing such a prized client embrace a competitor such as, say,Thomson Reuters (NYSE:TRI) .
In its post-op-ed editorial, Bloomberg had the option of blasting either Smith or Goldman Sachs.
Meanwhile, the critics were much quicker to discredit Smith personally than his message.
You can connect the dots. "