Goldman exec resigns with a blistering farewell

Goldman Sachs, arguably the most storied investment bank on Wall Street, has been compared to a money-sucking vampire squid and called the evil empire of finance. Today it got an entirely different kind of black eye—delivered by one of its own. Greg Smith, an executive director at the bank, resigned with a blistering editorial that accused the bank of losing its “moral fiber,” putting profits ahead of customers’ interests and dismissing customers as “muppets.” The decline of the bank’s culture, he writes, threatened the bank’s survival after 143 years. The stinging editorial, “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs,” has been the talk of Wall Street today, after appearing in the The New York Times, and word of it spread like wildfire through social networks, blogs and traditional media. Goldman swiftly issued a three-sentence statement disagreeing with Smith. “In our view,” the bank says, “we will only be successful if our clients are successful. This fundamental truth lies at the heart of how we conduct ourselves.” Smith worked for Goldman in London, but the bank did not provide further details. Smith wrote that he attended sales meetings in which helping clients make money was not part of the discussion. “If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all,” he writes. Read the full editorial here, and check out the full story from The Associated Press for more reaction here.