Yes, billions of dollars in bailouts and bonuses, counterparty fiascos, claims to be “doing God’s work,” and almost singlehandedly toppling the entire economy of Greece will do quite a number on your public image. For a general public that hardly knew who Goldman Sachs was before the crisis, the name now evokes feelings of disgust and mistrust, of “fat cat” bankers stuffing the pockets in their designer suits with taxpayer dollars in the greatest heist this country’s ever seen. Quite simply, Goldman has a massive PR migraine that’s only getting worse.
So, the New York Post reports, the firm’s fearless, Bronx-born leader, Lloyd Blankfein, did what any rightminded corporate CEO would do: He brought in some PR muscle To spruce up Goldman’s image Blankfein turned to Public Strategies, a slick Texas-based firm led by Dan Bartlett, a close confidante to George W. Bush and Karl Rove. From the Post story:
Earlier this month, Goldman clients and Wall Street analysts starting filling out an exhaustive, online questionnaire seeking to pinpoint exactly what people thought of Blankfein’s firm. One question wanted survey participants to compare Goldman to other Wall Street banks—and names rivals JPMorgan Chase, UBS, Bank of America, Citigroup and Barclays. Respondents were asked to fill in blanks from least favorable to most favorable.
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“For the first 139 years it wasn’t that relevant to us to explain ourselves,” Blankfein told Fortune recently. “And now it became very relevant and the press did an important thing for us, they pointed out to us that that was a deficiency in our strategy, not to reveal ourselves…I’m just trying to take pains, which we should have done all along, to make sure that people understand what we do in the world.”
Yes, please, Lloyd—do explain to the people what exactly the purpose of a synthetic collaterized debt obligation is apart from a massive casino chip.
