Virtuous Bankers? Really!?!

[Toucano]

In an interview with The Sunday Times of London, the cocky chief of Goldman Sachs said he understands that a lot of people are “mad and bent out of shape” at blood-sucking banks.

“I know I could slit my wrists and people would cheer,” Lloyd Blankfein, the C.E.O., told the reporter John Arlidge.

But the little people who are boiling simply don’t understand. And Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, who unforgettably labeled Goldman “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,” doesn’t understand.

Banks, Blankfein explained, are really serving the greater good.

“We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital,” he said. “Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle. We have a social purpose.”

When Arlidge asked whether it’s possible to make too much money, whether Goldman will ignore the people howling at the moon with rage and go on raking it in, getting richer than God, Blankfein grinned impishly and said he was “doing God’s work.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/opinion/11dowd.html?em

I just love that "doing God's work" part!

But Dowd gets it right here:

As many Americans continue to struggle, Goldman, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, banks that took government bailout money after throwing the entire world into crisis, have said they will dish out $30 billion in bonuses — up 60 percent from last year.

The saying used to be, whatever happens, the lawyers win. Now, it’s whatever happens, the bankers win.

[Postman]

1. Is that the same as Honorable Thieves?

[cdsilv]

2. Wall street is really now just a casino.....and win or lose, the house always gets their cut. n/t

[Brigid]

3. I asked yesterday where we should go with a torch and pitchfork parade.

Now I know -- Blankfein's house.

[ElboRuum]

4. Oxymoron Overload...

Oh wait... Blankfein might be a simple case of Moron Overload. *SZZZZT* *POP* <-- Synapses.

[barbtries]

5. sounds like an oxymoron to me nt

[Sinti]

6. It all depends on what god you worship.

Rationality and common sense have completely left the building, so you can see it is a religion. A fundamentalist religion that worships coin.

The philosophy is that of a black hole/Black Sun - all resources go to the same small group until there is only one, and then we all die. It's almost like a death cult. The money itself is just sleight of hand. Cult of the Black Sun Empire.

[Toucano]

7. How obvious!

That hadn't occurred to me, but it's clearly the case.

[formercia]

8. Translated, Opus Dei means: 'God's work.' n/t

[fascisthunter]

9. can a sociopath have any virtues

interesting thought.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. Right. And, slavers were doing god's work when they brought those pagans to 'Murka and Jesus.

[Buns_of_Fire]

11. “I know I could slit my wrists and people would cheer.” Heavens no, Mr. Blankfein.

First, I'd sell tickets to the event.

THEN I'd cheer.

[Toucano]

12. I am sure he would admire your entrepreneurial spirit.

:)