New Goldman Sachs Ads Make Me Want to Puke

Goldman Sachs create a “doing God’s work” ad campaign.

Goldman Sach’s spokesperson looks like Tina Fey and dresses like she’s heading to Lollapalooza

In late 2009, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein granted the Times of London an interview. At the time, alumni of Goldman were rarely seen or heard from in the press due to the company’s declining reputation at home and abroad for its role in the 2008 economic collapse.

The 6900-word article was published on November 8, 2009 and went viral for just three of its words. Blankfein described himself as a humble banker, “doing God’s work.”

The media coverage and public outrage resulted in an even greater media blackout from Goldman, until they were forced to testify in front of Congress in April 2010. The SEC had brought fraud charges against the bank for their role in an exchange labeled Abacus 2007-AC1. In this exchange, Goldman sold securities to one client with full knowledge that another client was betting the package would fail.

At the hearing, Blankfein lied through his teeth, explaining that “in the context of market-making” what Goldman had done was not wrong. Academy Award winner Charles Ferguson, who produced Wall Street film “Inside Job,” explained to me:

“What was deeply deceptive about his answer was Goldman weren’t just making markets. When you make a market, when you’re doing it properly, you create an arena where buyers and sellers can come together and transact on fair terms. That’s not what they were doing.

Goldman was taking one side of a transaction that they were themselves creating and structuring so that it would cause the other side of the transaction to fail. Then they could profit from their side of the transaction. That is not market-making. They were claiming that it was because they wanted to pull the wool over the public’s eyes, and more importantly, wanted to avoid criminal prosecution.

In principle, it is legal to create a security with the intention of betting against it and then to sell it to other people. In principle, it is legal to do that. As a practical matter it is very difficult to do on a large scale over a long period of time without committing fraud because if you tell people the truth you’re not going to do very much business.”

Yet business is booming for Goldman Sachs, mainly because our country does not prosecute bankers when they break the law.

Goldman is running a new ad campaign (on the New York Times no less) called “Progress Is Everyone’s Business.” The campaign states “Progress is when communities can rebuild.” The message is supported by three four-minute videos. Each video begins with a minority explaining how Goldman Sachs is helping save or augment their communities and lives.

Goldman Sachs would like us to think they are saving the world and are involved at every level of American life. They are not. In fact, employees of Goldman and their shareholders could not be any different from you and I. They live and prosper at the highest levels of illusory power available to mankind. The only similarity between us and them is that they make mistakes. And when they do, we’re always there to bail them out.