Thursday, September 10, 2009

Contrast FT Article on Goldman Sachs CEO’s ‘Contrition’ With Blogger’s Interpretation

One of the fundamental old/new media dynamics is the processing and reprocessing of news articles through the opinion filter of blogs. We take it for granted now, but a short decade ago, we had scant outlets for this kind of instant interpretation:

Financial Times:

Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, on Wednesday admitted that banks lost control of the exotic products they sold in the run-up to the financial crisis, and said that some of the instruments lacked social or economic value. In a speech to the Handelsblatt banking conference in Frankfurt, he also repeated an attack, first made in the spring, on Wall Street compensation practices, calling the furore over bankers’ pay “understandable and appropriate”.

The startling message from the head of the world’s most high-profile investment bank echoes comments by Lord Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, the UK regulator, who provoked controversy last month when he questioned the social value of much investment banking activity. Mr Blankfein said: “The industry let the growth and complexity in new instruments outstrip their economic and social utility as well as the operational capacity to manage them.”

Naked Capitalism:

The Financial Times tonight reports that Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein made “startling” remarks in Germany, for instance, that a lot of banking activity is rather thin on redeeming social value. Oh, and he admitted bankers might be paid too much, too.

Gee, with revelations like that, what might he to ‘fess up to next? That some employees have substance abuse problems? That bankers take clients to strip clubs? The mind simply boggles. Admitting to something that everyone knows is hardly a confession. particularly when it is as watered down as this one…

Topics: goldman-sachs, new-media