The fallout continues after Greg Smith’s brutal takedown of his now-very-former employer Goldman Sachs. A company spokesman confirmed that Lloyd Blankfein and the GS team have launched an internal review into Smith’s career, talking with his bosses and colleagues in London to figure out, well, just how Smith got that angry. Goldman top dogs, including Blankfein, spent much of the day discussing the op-ed with clients, directors, and shareholders. Goldman’s shares dropped 3.35 percent at the close of business today.
Ping-pong champ Smith has made some enemies in cyberspace today, but two of his new friends may surprise you: billionaires Jim Clark and Stephen Jarislowsky.
Clark, the founder of Netscape and Silicon Graphics, hired Goldman to manage a “significant amount of private wealth” from 2002 to 2007. “I have no idea how much money G.S. made from me,” Clark told Forbes, “but it was too much, and they will never make another dime at my expense.”
Jarislowsky is the CEO of a Canadian investment bank called … Jarislowsky. He had some biting words for the Vampire Squid:
It’s about ethics and fiduciary responsibility, and the lack thereof. If you’re a fiduciary you should work for your client and not for anyone else. If you’re a doctor, you’re not supposed to work for your pocketbook, but for your client’s health…A lot of people say the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’ That should be over every desk on Wall Street.
The media frenzy has not quieted. ThinkProgress has a video compilation of reactions of Smith’s op-ed, including a CNBC segment in which anchors list off some actual muppets: “Who’s Oscar the Grouch? Is that a big hedge fund? Is that Paulson?” Charles Gasparino of Fox Business tweeted that his sources at Goldman explained that Smith didn’t know what he was talking about since he “didn’t make more than $750,000 a year.”
HuffPo has a roundup of the best Smith-related Tweets, none of which can match GS Elevator’s overheards, including today’s, “I bet Greg Smith doesn’t know shit about ‘guy code’, either.”
