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by guelo 5207 days ago
So he thinks Goldman was honorable back when he was young and had no idea what was going on. Bullshit. I happen to know of some shady Goldman credit swaps from the 90s that my municipality has been trying to get out of. I'm sure there is plenty of other garbage that went on back then too. You don't hire a bunch of mostly young male type-A personalities and wave million dollar bonuses in their faces and not expect questionable deals.
2 comments

>mostly young male type-A personalities...wave million dollar bonuses in their face

This also characterises hackers and Silicon Valley. There are some really good people on Wall Street just as there are some real turds in Silicon Valley.

If you go back into Goldman Sachs's history it was a venerable firm with a storied past of forsaking short-term profit for the client, i.e. being long-term greedy instead of short-term greedy (quoting a GS executive from the 1970s). It started changing in the 1980s and completed its transformation after its IPO.

Values aren't a function of sex or ambition.

"there are some real turds in Silicon Valley", understatement of the year. Gimme some time, I'll eventually rant about this on my way out the door too.
I found this a bit strange as well and initially thought the article to be some kind of a spoof. I don't know a thing about investment banking but I have never, ever in my life read anything positive about the prevalent cultures at these firms.