Also see: Goldman Sachs - The Secret Behind Sky-High Oil Prices
Working in the highest echelons of the political campaigns, too! Surprised?
"Goldman Sachs Rakes In Profit in Credit Crisis" by JENNY ANDERSON and LANDON THOMAS Jr.
For more than three months, as turmoil in the credit market has swept wildly through Wall Street, one mighty investment bank after another has been brought to its knees, leveled by multibillion-dollar blows to their bottom lines.
And then there is Goldman Sachs.
For Goldman’s chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, this is turning out to be a very good year. He will surely earn more than the $54.3 million he made last year. If he gets a 20 percent raise — in line with the growth of Goldman’s compensation pool — he will take home at least $65 million. Some expect his pay, which is directly tied to the firm’s performance, to climb as high as $75 million.
Stephen Friedman, a former co-chairman and now a Goldman director:
“There is no mystery, or secret handshake. We did a lot of work to build a culture here in the 1980s, and now people are playing on the balls of their feet. We just have a damn good talent pool.”
That pool has allowed Goldman to extend its reach across Wall Street and beyond.
Last week, John A. Thain, a former Goldman co-president, accepted the top position at Merrill Lynch, while a fellow Goldman alumnus, Duncan L. Niederauer, took Mr. Thain’s job running the New York Stock Exchange. Another fellow veteran trader, Daniel Och, took his $30 billion hedge fund public.
Meanwhile, two Goldman managing directors helped bring Alex Rodriguez back to the Yankees, a deal that could enhance the value of Goldman’s 40 percent stake in the YES cable network — which it is trying to sell — while also pleasing Yankee fans. The symmetry was perfect: like the Yankees, Goldman, more than any other bank on Wall Street, is both hated and revered.
What is this even doing in the story? That's part of the sports, isn't it?
Now you see who is behind the selling of sports, readers!
Just like ancient Rome and her "games."
Robert E. Rubin, a former Goldman head, is the new chairman of Citigroup. In Washington, another former chief, Henry M. Paulson Jr., is the Treasury secretary, having been recruited by Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff and yet another former Goldman executive.
The heads of the Canadian and Italian central banks are Goldman alumni. The World Bank president, Robert B. Zoellick, is another. Jon S. Corzine, once a co-chairman, is the governor of New Jersey. And in academia, Robert S. Kaplan, a former vice chairman, has just been picked as the interim head of Harvard University’s $35 billion endowment.
Since going public in 1999, Goldman has been the No. 1 mergers and acquisitions adviser, globally and in the United States, with two exceptions: in 2005 it came in second in the United States rankings, and in 2000 it lost the top spot globally. In both instances, Morgan Stanley took the lead.
In recent years, Goldman has established the largest private equity and real estate fund complexes in the world. That has led to natural tensions with private equity clients who sometimes complain, but never publicly, about Goldman’s common insistence to team up with them for a piece of the deal.
One client who asked not to be named because he does business with the firm:
“Goldman has done the best job of any firm in the U.S. or world competing with their clients but doing business with them. They’ve managed to get their clients to live with it.”
Still, this bottom-line approach has turned off some Goldman veterans and clients. They see the firm’s desire to advise, finance and invest — a so-called triple play — as antithetical to Goldman’s stated No. 1 business principle of putting clients first.
And there is little question that its success in trading, investment banking and servicing hedge funds — many of the traders come right from Goldman — allows the firm a bird’s-eye view on trends and capital flows in the market.
Numerous Goldman investment bankers, former and current, voice the view that Mr. Blankfein’s approach — using Goldman’s investment banking business to develop principal investment opportunities for the firm — creates a brand intended to feed Goldman’s profits rather than relationships. But this harking back to the firm’s golden days as a pure advisory firm does not find much sympathy at Goldman these days.
Mr. Friedman: “I have little patience for these people who talk of the last days of Camelot. Principal investing has been an important and useful business. If you want to be relevant you have to anticipate where the world is going.”
Mr. Blankfein, at the conference last week, echoed that sentiment: “While the integration of our investment banking operations with our merchant bank was somewhat controversial at the time, we felt these businesses were mutually reinforcing.”
Money soothes a lot of concerns, of course, and Goldman has had plenty to spread around. Through the third quarter, Goldman’s $16.9 billion compensation pool — the money it sets aside to pay its employees — was significantly bigger than the entire $11.4 billion market capitalization of Bear Stearns.
For all its success on Wall Street, it is Goldman’s global reach and political heft that inspire a mix of envy and admiration. In the race for president, Goldman Sachs executives are the top contributors to Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, and the second highest contributor to Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mr. Blankfein has held a fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton in his apartment and has come out publicly in her favor.
I don't vote for globalists, whoever they are!
Another member of Goldman’s influential diaspora is Philip D. Murphy, a retired executive who is the chief fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee.
All of which has made Goldman a favorite of conspiracy theorists, columnists and bloggers who see the firm as a Wall Street version of the Trilateral Commission.
Hey! When the Times slams the blogs, you know we came close to the mark!
One particular obsession is President Bush’s working group on the markets, an informal committee led by Mr. Paulson that includes Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve; Christopher Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission; and Walter Lukken, the acting chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
The group meets about once a quarter — privately, with no minutes taken — to ensure that government agencies are briefed on market conditions and issues. The group is currently examining the extent to which the packaging and distribution of mortgage loans contributed to the crisis. It also recently completed a study recommending that hedge funds not be subject to further regulation; the group’s fund committee was led by Eric Mindich, a former Goldman trader who now runs a successful hedge fund.
There is no evidence that the conduct of the group is anything but above board. But to some, the group’s existence adds more color to the view that Goldman is indeed everywhere — much as J. P. Morgan was in the early years of the 20th century.
How can you tell, Times?
There are NO MINUTES TAKEN in the PRIVATE MEETINGS!!!!
What a bunch of myth-makers and liars the Times is!
