LOS ANGELES (MCT) — Until now, the most scathing words ever written about Goldman Sachs Group Inc. came from Matt Taibbi, the Rolling Stone reporter who famously labeled the Wall Street giant a “vampire squid.”
A new piece by Greg Smith avoids such oratorical bombast, but the accusations he levels at Goldman are just as damning. And Smith’s creed may have deeper import given where he worked until Wednesday: as a top executive at Goldman Sachs.
In an op-ed piece published Wednesday in the New York Times, Smith, the head of the firm’s U.S. equity derivatives business in Europe and the Middle East, alleges that the firm has lost its moral compass. He decries a corporate ethos that he says “is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.”
The reason, he writes, is that Goldman has become so single-mindedly focused on making money that it routinely sacrifices the best interest of its clients. Goldman and the rest of Wall Street exist, of course, to turn as large a profit as possible.
