Greg Smith, Goldman Sachs and Job Creating and Killing

      There has been varied reaction to Smith's recent op-ed in the NY Times that criticizes the culture at Goldman Sachs. The Right decries it as giving aid and comfort to "banker bashing", the Center sees it as largely uplifting and salutary that he as a former insider is setting the record straight, but then the hard Left is less impressed.

    Actually what the Left and Right both point out that he had a good run there before his sudden pang of conscience.

    "Vasant Ramachandran, a Stanford student, said he questioned why Smith spent 12 years working his way up at Goldman Sachs and only spoke out after the firm became an easy target in the media."

     "A hero or whistleblower reveals new information about something he feels is wrong when there is still time to stop it, at great social and personal cost to himself," Ramachandran said. "Mr. Smith reveals his discomfort with Goldman after he has reaped every benefit possible for 12 years and after everything that he says has already been said or established beyond the point of recovery."

     http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/20/greg-smith-goldman-sachs-students_n_1367868.html

     Jim Cramer on yesterday's show displayed his usual admirable facility for double, triple and even "quadruple" talk by saying that Smith someone did something wrong by saying something-that he wouldn't do something like that after profiting handsomely for 12 years-somehow it's bad form to rat out Goldman-but then saying that the company will do everything to make sure that this sort of thing is stamped out and praising Goldman for it's determination

     Evidently, Goldman has been reacting quite sharply to all this. It has apparently gone as far as to scour emails for the word "muppets."

     http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/22/goldman-sachs-e-mails-muppet_n_1372178.html

     Yesterday I was speaking to a friend of mine who has some experience in the financial and brokerage industry. She told me that a friend of hers that works at Goldman Sachs here in NY recently got fired along with his whole office. What was the reason? Evidently since Smith's piece came out, they have been losing money and had to make the cuts.

    So whatever one thinks of /Smith's piece-I kind of found it unsurprising, I assume this sort of stuff happens; it's a little more interesting that it was from an insider-one impact of it is that a number of people have lost their jobs. Which is kind of interesting-many of us here get into some discussions and debates about what creates vs. kill jobs and is good for the economy but who would have guessed that Smith's piece actually would kill many jobs?