Even in retirement, former Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein sounds less like a penitent banker than an irreverent trader between deals.
In his new memoir, Streetwise, Blankfein can’t resist a dig at a certain US president. Reflecting on his own working-class upbringing, he notes that “people from my neighbourhood didn’t have doctors to sign letters attesting to their obscure disabilities, such as bone spurs”.
The same quick, combative wit marked Blankfein’s career. Financial Times columnist John Gapper recalls first meeting Blankfein more than 20 years ago, noting he “got the feeling that the bank had hesitated before letting him out in public”. No great diplomat, Blankfein and Goldman became a lightning rod for criticism during the 2008-09 global financial crisis, when an outraged public failed to see the humour after Blankfein quipped that the bank was “doing God’s work”.
Blankfein remains unapologetic, remarking that the 9/11 terrorist attacks brought “the rare crisis that no one blamed on us”.
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His own 2002 performance review, reproduced in the book, reads like a checklist of traderly sins: “become more statesmanlike and positive”; “be viewed as more empathetic”; “understand better the impact of his current position”; “sarcasm can be biting and sometimes inappropriate”.
However, the blunt instincts of the trader never quite left him. Asked recently by the New York Times if there was something he wished he had done differently during the financial crisis, Blankfein replied that, with perfect knowledge, he would have “gone out and shorted every security instead of being flat”.
Bloomberg’s Matt Levine, himself a Goldman alumnus, relished the candour: no ritual contrition, just missed profit. That, says Levine, was “why he was the CEO of Goldman”.
