Chat with this content: Summary, Analysis, News...
Share on Reddit
Goldman Sachs: The Vampire Squid's Evolution
I. Introduction & Episode Roadmap
Picture this: December 2008. Lloyd Blankfein sits in his corner office at 200 West Street, staring at the Manhattan skyline as snow begins to fall. Three months earlier, Goldman Sachs—the firm that had survived the Great Depression, two world wars, and countless market crashes—had admitted it was "toast" without government intervention. The mighty vampire squid, as Rolling Stone would soon call it, had nearly suffocated in the financial crisis it helped create. Yet here was Blankfein, not just surviving but calculating how to emerge stronger, richer, more powerful than ever.
How does a company go from being one coal chute away from obscurity in 1869 to becoming the most influential financial institution on Earth? How does it place alumni in seemingly every corner of government—from Treasury Secretaries to central bank governors—while maintaining its mystique as Wall Street's most selective club? And perhaps most intriguingly: how does it repeatedly dance on the edge of destruction, only to emerge with even greater market share? Today, Goldman Sachs is the second-largest investment bank in the world by revenue and is ranked 55th on the Fortune 500 list, with headquarters still anchored in Lower Manhattan and regional offices stretching from London to Hong Kong. But this is not a story of steady, linear progress. It's a tale of immigrant ambition, family feuds, catastrophic gambles, near-death experiences, and the ultimate prize: becoming so essential to global capitalism that failure itself becomes impossible.
Over the next several hours, we'll trace this evolution from Marcus Goldman's humble commercial paper operation to David Solomon's modern colossus generating $53.5 billion in revenue in 2024. We'll examine how Goldman built its legendary partnership culture, why it abandoned that structure after 130 years, how it survived—and profited from—the 2008 financial crisis while competitors collapsed, and what its dominance tells us about American capitalism itself.
The themes that emerge are as complex as they are controversial: the tension between serving clients and trading against them, the revolving door between 200 West Street and Washington D.C., the price of being "too big to fail," and the eternal question—is Goldman Sachs the smartest firm on Wall Street or simply the most ruthless?
What makes this story particularly fascinating is not just Goldman's survival but its ability to transform crisis into opportunity. Every existential threat—from the 1929 crash to Penn Central to 2008—somehow left the firm stronger. As we'll see, this isn't luck. It's a playbook refined over 155 years, one that values information over everything, treats risk as religion, and understands that in finance, proximity to power is power itself.
II. The Immigrant's Dream: Marcus Goldman & Early Years (1869–1906)
The year is 1848. Revolution sweeps across Europe like wildfire—monarchies topple, barricades rise in Paris, Vienna erupts in violence. In the small Bavarian town of Trappstadt, a 27-year-old Jewish cattle drover named Marcus Goldman watches his world collapse. The failed revolutions bring not freedom but intensified antisemitism. Jewish communities face pogroms, economic restrictions tighten, and the dream of equality dies in the streets. Goldman makes a decision that will reshape American finance: he boards a ship to America.
Marcus Goldman wasn't supposed to become a titan of Wall Street. Born in 1821 to Mark Goldmann (the family would later anglicize the name) and his wife Ella, Marcus grew up in rural Bavaria where Jews faced strict limitations on employment, movement, and even marriage. His father traded cattle—one of the few professions permitted to Jews—and Marcus learned early that success meant reading people as carefully as balance sheets. When he arrived in Philadelphia in 1848, he carried little more than determination and an understanding that in America, unlike Bavaria, a Jew could build something lasting.
Philadelphia in the 1850s teemed with opportunity and chaos. Marcus started as an itinerant peddler, carrying goods on his back through Pennsylvania Dutch country. The work was brutal—walking twenty miles a day, sleeping in barns, facing suspicious farmers who'd never seen a Jew before. But Marcus possessed an unusual gift: he could evaluate character instantly, sensing who would pay their debts and who would disappear into the night. This skill—reading creditworthiness through handshakes and conversations rather than financial statements—would become the foundation of an empire.
In 1850, Marcus married Bertha Goldman (coincidentally sharing his surname), whose family had established themselves in Philadelphia's growing Jewish community. Bertha brought not just a dowry but connections—her relatives ran successful businesses, attended synagogue with other German-Jewish immigrants, and understood that in America, community meant capital. Together they had five children, including daughters Rosa, Louisa, and Rebecca, whose marriages would prove as strategically important as any IPO.
By 1869, Marcus had saved enough to make his next move. New York was becoming the nation's financial capital, and Marcus sensed opportunity in the chaos following the Civil War. He rented a one-room basement office at 30 Pine Street, next to a coal chute, and hung a simple shingle: "Marcus Goldman, Banker and Broker."
The innovation that built Goldman Sachs wasn't complex—it was brilliant in its simplicity. Marcus discovered a gap in the market: small merchants and entrepreneurs needed short-term capital but couldn't access bank loans. Meanwhile, commercial banks sat on idle cash seeking safe, short-term investments. Marcus became the bridge. He would visit hat makers, leather goods dealers, and textile merchants in lower Manhattan, buying their promissory notes at a steep discount—sometimes 8-9% for 30-90 day paper. Then he'd walk uptown to the commercial banks and sell the notes at a smaller discount, pocketing the spread.
What made Marcus different wasn't just the business model—it was his method. While established bankers demanded extensive documentation and collateral, Marcus relied on relationships. He'd sit in a merchant's shop, observe their customers, examine their inventory, gauge their character through conversation. A firm handshake might be worth more than a financial statement. His Bavarian cattle-trading heritage served him well—he could smell desperation or dishonesty instantly.
The numbers tell the story of his success. By 1882, Marcus was turning over $30 million in commercial paper annually—roughly $950 million in today's dollars. His reputation grew: if Marcus Goldman bought your paper, banks would too. He became a one-man credit rating agency, his judgment trusted from Wall Street to Washington Street.
But Marcus understood that family businesses needed family. In 1882, his daughter Louisa had married Samuel Sachs, a young man from a prominent Bavarian-Jewish family who'd established themselves in Boston's financial circles. Samuel was everything Marcus wasn't—refined, educated, cautious where Marcus was bold. When Marcus invited his son-in-law to join the firm as a partner, it wasn't nepotism—it was strategy. The firm became Goldman, Sachs & Co., though locals still called it "Goldman's."
The 1880s brought more family into the fold. Marcus's son Henry Goldman joined in 1885, bringing an aggressive ambition that sometimes worried his father. Henry had grown up watching Marcus build the business note by note, but he dreamed bigger—why just trade commercial paper when you could underwrite entire companies? Ludwig Dreyfuss, husband of Marcus's daughter Rebecca, also joined, creating a family firm that controlled both ownership and management.
By 1896, Goldman Sachs had grown large enough to seek a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. The membership cost $150,000—a fortune at the time—but it represented arrival. Goldman Sachs was no longer a scrappy commercial paper dealer but a legitimate Wall Street firm. The boy from Bavaria who'd fled pogroms now controlled one of New York's rising financial houses.
The real breakthrough came in 1906, though Marcus was already stepping back from daily operations. Henry Goldman had befriended Julius Rosenwald, a fellow German-Jew who'd built Sears, Roebuck & Company into America's largest retailer through mail-order catalogs. Sears needed capital to expand, but traditional investment banks like J.P. Morgan wouldn't touch it—retail was considered too risky, too common, beneath the dignity of white-shoe firms that financed railroads and steel.
Henry saw opportunity where others saw risk. He convinced his father and uncle that Sears represented the future—a new kind of company selling directly to America's growing middle class. The initial public offering in 1906 raised $30 million, with Goldman Sachs as lead underwriter. The stock soared. Suddenly, Goldman Sachs wasn't just successful—it was innovative, willing to back entrepreneurs that established firms ignored.
Marcus Goldman lived to see this triumph but not much longer. He died in 1909, leaving an estate worth $5 million (roughly $160 million today) and a firm bearing his name that had grown far beyond his immigrant dreams. His obituary in the New York Times called him "one of the builders of Wall Street," but that understates his achievement. Marcus didn't just build a firm—he created a model. Trust over documentation. Relationships over rigid rules. And most importantly: find value where others see only risk.
The commercial paper innovation seems quaint now, but it revolutionized American small business finance. Before Marcus, entrepreneurs faced impossible choices—predatory lenders or no credit at all. Marcus created a market, turning individual promises to pay into tradeable securities. Every time a small business today factors receivables or issues commercial paper, they're using Marcus Goldman's innovation.
But perhaps his greatest legacy was cultural. The firm he founded would always carry the DNA of the immigrant outsider—hungrier than established competitors, willing to challenge conventions, understanding that in America, merit could triumph over birthright. That basement office next to the coal chute wasn't just where Goldman Sachs began—it was where modern investment banking discovered that fortune favors the bold. The question that would haunt his successors: how bold is too bold?
III. Building the Machine: Investment Banking Rise (1906–1929)
The morning of July 28, 1914, Henry Goldman sat in his corner office at 43 Exchange Place, reading cables from London. Austria-Hungary had just declared war on Serbia. Within days, the dominoes would fall—Russia, Germany, France, Britain—until all of Europe was aflame. But Henry wasn't thinking about geopolitics. He was thinking about his friend, Philip Lehman of Lehman Brothers, and the alliance they'd built to challenge J.P. Morgan's stranglehold on American finance. That partnership was about to shatter over something as distant as the Kaiser's ambitions and as intimate as family loyalty.
After Marcus Goldman's death in 1909, control of Goldman Sachs passed to an unlikely duo: Samuel Sachs, the cautious son-in-law who preferred steady commercial paper profits, and Henry Goldman, Marcus's son who dreamed of turning Goldman Sachs into a powerhouse rivaling Morgan and Kuhn, Loeb. Their contrasting styles created a dynamic tension—Samuel's conservatism checking Henry's ambition, Henry's vision pushing Samuel's boundaries. Together, they'd grown the firm from $5 million in capital to over $20 million by 1914.
The key to their expansion was an unlikely alliance. In 1906, Henry had approached Philip Lehman with a proposal: Goldman Sachs had the retail and consumer goods expertise; Lehman Brothers understood commodities and Southern markets. Why not combine forces to compete with the Morgan monopoly? The partnership worked brilliantly. Together they underwrote Studebaker, F.W. Woolworth, Continental Can, and dozens of other companies that traditional Wall Street ignored. By 1912, the Goldman-Sachs-Lehman alliance was underwriting over $75 million in securities annually.
Henry's genius lay in seeing value where others saw vulgarity. While J.P. Morgan financed railroads and U.S. Steel—the commanding heights of industrial capitalism—Henry backed department stores, retailers, and consumer goods companies. His logic was simple: America was becoming a consumer society. The average American would never buy steel ingots, but they'd shop at Sears, Woolworth's, and May Department Stores. "The mines and mills and railroads will always need bankers," Henry told his partners, "but the future belongs to whoever serves the American consumer."
The firm's culture reflected this democratic capitalism. In 1912, Henry made a radical decision: he promoted Henry S. Bowers to partner, the first non-family member to achieve that status. Bowers wasn't Jewish, didn't marry into the family, had no connection to the German-Jewish aristocracy that dominated Wall Street's Jewish firms. He was simply brilliant at evaluating retail companies. The message was clear—at Goldman Sachs, talent trumped bloodlines.
But as Europe descended into war, the partnership began to fracture. Henry Goldman was passionately pro-German. He'd studied in Germany, spoke fluent German, believed German culture represented the apex of civilization. When the war began, he refused to buy Liberty Bonds, telling anyone who'd listen that Germany was fighting for survival against British imperialism. At one partners' meeting in 1915, he declared, "The Kaiser is no different from King George—they're both fighting for empire."
Samuel Sachs was horrified. He had two sons who would soon be eligible for the draft. The firm's clients were American companies selling to American consumers. Supporting Germany—even rhetorically—was business suicide. The arguments grew vicious. Samuel accused Henry of putting philosophy over profits. Henry shot back that Samuel was a coward, bowing to mob sentiment.
The breaking point came at a partners' dinner in early 1917. America was weeks from entering the war. Henry raised his glass and toasted "the fatherland." Samuel walked out. Philip Lehman followed. The room sat in stunned silence as Henry finished his champagne alone. Within weeks, Henry Goldman resigned from the firm his father had founded, selling his stake back to the remaining partners for $5 million. He never set foot in 43 Exchange Place again.
Samuel Sachs now controlled Goldman Sachs, but he'd lost his greatest dealmaker. The Lehman alliance was dead—Philip couldn't forgive Henry's German sympathies or Samuel's inability to control his partner. The firm that had challenged Morgan suddenly found itself isolated, its deal flow evaporating. Samuel needed new blood, new vision, someone who could restore Goldman's reputation and momentum.
He found it in Waddill Catchings, a Mississippi native with a Harvard Law degree and connections throughout corporate America. Catchings joined in 1918, bringing a radically different vision. Why just underwrite securities for companies? Why not create securities, package them, trade them, turn Goldman Sachs from a service provider into a principal investor? Samuel, exhausted from the Henry Goldman civil war, gave Catchings unprecedented freedom.
The 1920s roared, and Goldman Sachs roared louder. Under Catchings' leadership, the firm underwrote $1.5 billion in securities between 1925 and 1929. But Catchings' masterpiece—or catastrophe, depending on your perspective—was the Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation, launched in December 1928.
The Trading Corporation was financial engineering at its most creative and dangerous. Goldman Sachs created a publicly traded investment trust, essentially a closed-end fund that would invest in other companies. The initial offering raised $100 million, with Goldman Sachs retaining a 40% stake. The stock price doubled within weeks. Catchings then performed financial alchemy: the Trading Corporation created another trust, the Shenandoah Corporation, which created another trust, the Blue Ridge Corporation. Each trust issued stock and bonds, using the proceeds to buy stakes in the others, creating a pyramid of leverage that would make modern derivatives traders blanch.
By summer 1929, the Trading Corporation controlled over $500 million in assets with only $100 million in actual capital—a 5:1 leverage ratio that seemed conservative by the standards of the day but would prove catastrophic. The original $100 million investment was valued at $500 million on paper. Goldman Sachs partners were worth fortunes they'd never dreamed possible. Catchings was hailed as a genius who'd discovered how to manufacture wealth from thin air.
The numbers from 1929 capture the insanity. Trading Corporation stock hit $326 per share in early 1929. Blue Ridge reached $117. Shenandoah touched $141. Goldman Sachs itself, still a private partnership, was valued by partners at over $100 million—twenty times its book value just a decade earlier. The firm opened new offices in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, even Berlin. It hired hundreds of salesmen, analysts, traders. The basement office next to the coal chute was now a marble-clad temple to capitalism.
But hidden in the prosperity were warning signs. Eddie Cantor, the comedian who'd invested his life savings in Trading Corporation on Goldman's recommendation, joked to audiences: "They told me to buy Goldman Sachs stock for my old age. It worked—I feel like I'm ninety years old!" The laughter was nervous. Everyone sensed the music would stop; nobody wanted to be caught without a chair.
The partnership structure during this period deserves examination. Unlike corporations with shareholders and boards, Goldman Sachs operated as a pure partnership. Partners had unlimited liability—if the firm failed, creditors could seize their personal assets, their homes, everything. This should have encouraged conservatism. Instead, it created a gambling mentality: if you're betting everything anyway, why not bet big?
The international expansion during the 1920s established patterns that persist today. Goldman opened its London office in 1925, not to serve British companies but to access European capital for American deals. The relationship with Kleinwort Sons, established in 1887, deepened into a full alliance. Goldman partners shuttled between New York and London on luxury liners, living like the aristocrats they'd once envied.
Cultural changes accompanied the growth. The firm that Marcus Goldman had run like a family store now employed over 600 people. Harvard MBAs replaced City College graduates. The partners' dining room served four-course lunches with wine. The firm bought a box at the Metropolitan Opera, a table at the Union Club, all the accouterments of establishment respectability.
Yet underneath the polish, Goldman retained its outsider edge. While Morgan partners summered in Newport, Goldman partners worked through August. While Kuhn, Loeb maintained banker's hours, Goldman traders arrived before dawn. The firm pioneered statistical analysis of securities, hiring mathematicians to build models predicting stock movements. They called it "scientific investing"—others called it gambling with equations.
As 1929 drew to a close, Waddill Catchings gave a speech to Goldman employees. "We have built something magnificent," he declared. "The Trading Corporation represents the democratization of investment, allowing ordinary Americans to participate in the prosperity of our greatest companies." He was right about one thing—ordinary Americans would indeed participate in what came next. But it wouldn't be prosperity they'd be sharing.
The partnership that had survived family feuds and world war was about to face its greatest test. The machine Henry Goldman and Waddill Catchings built had grown beyond anyone's comprehension or control. The question wasn't whether it would crash, but whether anything would survive the wreckage. Samuel Sachs, now in his seventies, would watch his life's work evaporate in weeks. But from that destruction would rise an unlikely savior—a Brooklyn-born janitor's son who'd started at Goldman as an assistant, carrying messages between partners who barely knew his name.
IV. Crash, Survival & The Weinberg Era (1929–1969)
October 29, 1929. Black Tuesday. Sidney Weinberg stood at the trading desk at 43 Exchange Place, watching numbers that defied comprehension. Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation, which had touched $326 per share months earlier, traded at $32. By day's end, it would be worth $20. The pyramid of trusts Waddill Catchings had constructed—Shenandoah, Blue Ridge—collapsed like a house of cards in a hurricane. Partners who'd been worth millions on paper that morning were effectively bankrupt by lunch. One trader turned to Weinberg and said, "We've destroyed everything Marcus Goldman built in a single morning."
But Weinberg, all five-foot-four of him, just smiled grimly. "Then we'll build it again," he said. "Better."
The scale of the catastrophe defied belief. The Trading Corporation, which had controlled $500 million in assets, saw its value shrink to under $20 million within weeks. By 1932, shares that had peaked at $326 traded for $1.75. The original $100 million that Goldman Sachs had raised from public investors had evaporated almost entirely. Eddie Cantor's joke turned bitter: "The only thing that's holding Goldman Sachs up is the paint on the walls."
Lawsuits flooded in. Investors who'd bought Trading Corporation shares on Goldman's recommendation demanded restitution. The firm faced over $50 million in legal claims—ten times its remaining capital. Waddill Catchings, the architect of the disaster, resigned in disgrace, retreating to Mississippi where he would spend his remaining years writing economic treatises nobody would read. Samuel Sachs, broken by the catastrophe, died in 1935, having watched his brother-in-law's firm nearly disappear.
Enter Sidney Weinberg—the most unlikely savior in Wall Street history. Born in 1891 in Brooklyn's Red Hook section to Polish-Jewish immigrants, Sidney was the third of eleven children. His father was a liquor wholesaler who barely spoke English. His mother took in sewing to make ends meet. Sidney dropped out of P.S. 13 at age thirteen, not because he wasn't bright but because the family needed every dollar.
His first job at Goldman Sachs, in 1907, was as assistant to the janitor, earning $3 a week. His duties: delivering messages, cleaning spittoons, polishing the brass railings. But Sidney possessed something rare—an ability to remember everything he heard and everyone he met. Partners would discuss deals while he swept; Sidney absorbed every detail. When a partner couldn't remember a client's name, Sidney would whisper it as he passed. Soon, partners started asking the janitor's assistant for his opinion on deals.
By 1925, Sidney had worked his way from janitor's assistant to the trading desk to partnership—a fifteen-year ascent that would be impossible at any other Wall Street firm. He hadn't attended Harvard or Yale; his education came from night school at Brooklyn's Browne's Business College. But Sidney understood something his Ivy League colleagues didn't: business was about relationships, not pedigrees.
When the crash came, Sidney was one of the few partners with little personal wealth at risk—he'd been too junior to participate fully in the Trading Corporation bonanza. This poverty became his power. While other partners were paralyzed by personal catastrophe, Sidney could think clearly. He engineered a brilliant strategy: instead of declaring bankruptcy, Goldman would slowly, methodically repay every creditor, restore every relationship, rebuild trust dollar by dollar.
The numbers from the 1930s tell a story of grinding persistence. In 1930, Goldman Sachs revenues fell to $2.1 million—less than the firm earned in 1910. The partnership capital, which had exceeded $100 million in 1929, shrank to under $5 million. Of the twenty partners in 1929, only six remained by 1935. The firm survived on commercial paper trading—Marcus Goldman's original business—and the occasional small underwriting.
But Sidney saw opportunity in catastrophe. While competitors retreated, he expanded Goldman's relationships. He joined corporate boards—starting with McKesson & Robbins, then General Foods, Continental Can, eventually serving on thirty-one boards simultaneously. Each board seat brought business back to Goldman. CEOs who wouldn't return Goldman's calls would chat with Sidney at board meetings. Slowly, the deal flow returned.
Sidney's style was unique on Wall Street. He called everyone from CEO to janitor by their first name. His office door was always open. He'd show up at a client's factory floor, talking to workers about production problems. When Ford Motor Company considered going public in the 1950s, Henry Ford II asked Sidney to handle it not because Goldman was the biggest firm—it wasn't—but because Sidney was the only banker who understood manufacturing.
The Ford IPO in 1956 represented Goldman's resurrection. The offering was the largest in history—$657 million, valuing Ford at $3.2 billion. Goldman Sachs, written off as dead after 1929, was lead underwriter. The fee—$9 million—exceeded the firm's total capital. Sidney had engineered the impossible: Goldman Sachs was not just alive but thriving, handling the most prestigious deal of the decade.
Sidney's management philosophy transformed Goldman's culture. He instituted what he called "the loose-tight principle"—loose on ideas, tight on ethics. Partners had freedom to pursue deals, take risks, innovate. But any hint of impropriety meant immediate expulsion. "Our assets are our people, capital and reputation," he'd tell new hires. "If any of these are ever diminished, the last is the most difficult to restore." These words would become Goldman's motto, carved into conference rooms and, supposedly, consciences.
The Weinberg era also saw Goldman pioneer new business lines. Gus Levy, who joined in 1933 and became Sidney's protégé, revolutionized block trading in the 1950s. The concept was simple but radical: when institutions wanted to sell large blocks of stock, instead of dribbling shares into the market and depressing prices, Goldman would buy the entire block at a negotiated discount, then resell gradually for profit.
The first major block trade, in 1953, involved 100,000 shares of Studebaker. Levy bought the block at $18.25, resold at an average of $18.75, netting $50,000 profit in two days. By 1960, Goldman was executing over $1 billion in block trades annually, dominating a business that barely existed a decade earlier. Levy's traders, known as "Levy's boys," became Wall Street legends—aggressive, innovative, willing to commit massive capital on instinct.
The numbers from the Weinberg era document an extraordinary transformation. Partnership capital grew from $5 million in 1935 to $50 million in 1969. Revenues increased from $2 million to over $200 million. The firm that had six partners in 1935 had forty-three by 1969. Goldman Sachs, nearly destroyed by speculation, had become Wall Street's most conservative firm—and paradoxically, its most innovative.
Sidney's relationship with government deserves special attention. During World War II, he served as vice-chairman of the War Production Board, essentially running American industrial mobilization while refusing any salary. This dollar-a-year man coordinated the production of everything from bombers to boots, earning the nickname "the body snatcher" for his ability to recruit executives for government service. The connections he built—with generals, admirals, future presidents—would benefit Goldman for decades.
The cultural transformation under Sidney was profound. The firm that had been dominated by German-Jewish aristocracy became a meritocracy. Sidney hired Catholics, Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans—anyone with talent and hunger. He promoted women to senior positions decades before other Wall Street firms. When asked about diversity, Sidney's answer was simple: "I was a janitor's assistant. Who am I to discriminate?"
Yet Sidney wasn't soft. Partners who underperformed were ruthlessly culled. The "up or out" system—produce or leave—became Goldman gospel. Every December, partners would gather for what they called "the bloodbath"—compensation decisions that could make careers or destroy them. Sidney would sit at the head of the table, cigar smoke curling around his head, dispensing verdicts with biblical finality.
The international expansion accelerated under Sidney. The London office, shuttered during the war, reopened in 1953. Tokyo followed in 1969. But unlike the 1920s expansion, which chased quick profits, Sidney's international strategy focused on relationships. Goldman partners would spend years in foreign capitals, learning languages, understanding cultures, building trust. The firm that had been insular became genuinely global.
Sidney's personal quirks became Goldman lore. He collected ceramic pigs—hundreds of them, filling his office shelves. When asked why, he'd grin: "To remind me that bulls make money, bears make money, but pigs get slaughtered." He'd take the subway to work, standing in packed cars reading the Wall Street Journal, fellow commuters never knowing the rumpled little man beside them ran one of Wall Street's most powerful firms.
By 1969, when Sidney stepped down as senior partner at age seventy-seven, Goldman Sachs had been completely transformed. The firm that nearly disappeared in 1929 was now among Wall Street's elite. Revenue per partner exceeded $5 million. The client list read like a Fortune 500 index. The Trading Corporation disaster was ancient history, replaced by a reputation for conservative excellence.
But Sidney's greatest achievement wasn't financial—it was cultural. He'd taken a family firm dominated by nepotism and transformed it into a meritocracy. He'd replaced speculation with service, arrogance with hustle. Most importantly, he'd proven that on Wall Street, resurrection was possible. You could lose everything and rebuild, stronger than before.
Sidney died in 1969, still coming to the office until weeks before his death. His funeral at Temple Emanu-El brought together presidents and janitors, CEOs and secretaries. Henry Ford II gave the eulogy, calling Sidney "the most remarkable man I ever met—and I've met them all." The New York Times obituary ran on the front page, calling him "Mr. Wall Street"—the Brooklyn dropout who'd saved American capitalism's most Jewish firm and made it indispensable to American capitalism itself.
His successor, Gus Levy, inherited a firm that was profitable, prestigious, and about to face its next existential crisis. The lessons of 1929 had been learned, but the 1970s would bring new challenges—a commercial paper crisis that would echo Marcus Goldman's original business, testing whether Sidney's cultural transformation could survive without Sidney himself.
V. Penn Central Crisis & Trading Transformation (1969–1990s)
June 21, 1970. Sunday afternoon. Gus Levy sat in his Park Avenue apartment, telephone pressed to his ear, sweat beading on his forehead despite the air conditioning. On the other end, Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns delivered news that would determine Goldman Sachs's survival: Penn Central Transportation Company, the nation's largest railroad, would file for bankruptcy within hours. Goldman Sachs had sold nearly $100 million of Penn Central's commercial paper to clients. Paper that was now worthless.
"Gus," Burns said quietly, "this could destroy your firm."
Levy's response would define Goldman's next era: "Then we'll make our clients whole, Art. Every penny."
The Penn Central disaster was particularly cruel because it struck at Goldman's oldest, most trusted business—commercial paper, the very foundation Marcus Goldman had laid a century earlier. Throughout 1969, Goldman had aggressively marketed Penn Central's short-term debt to institutional clients, assuring them it was safe as government bonds. The railroad was too big to fail, Goldman's salesmen promised. American commerce depended on it.
But Penn Central was a financial Frankenstein, created from the 1968 merger of the Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads—two dying giants whose union created not strength but accelerated decay. Management had hidden losses through creative accounting, paying dividends with borrowed money while basic infrastructure crumbled. Trains derailed daily. Freight rotted in yards. The company burned through $1 million in cash every day just to keep running.
Goldman should have known. Warning signs were everywhere—delayed financial statements, management turnover, desperate requests for larger credit facilities. But the firm had grown complacent, assuming its hundred-year reputation for evaluating creditworthiness meant something. The commercial paper department, generating steady fees with minimal capital commitment, had become a cash cow nobody questioned.
When Penn Central filed the largest corporate bankruptcy in American history—$7 billion in assets—Goldman faced $100 million in lawsuits from clients who'd bought the worthless paper. The firm's capital was only $50 million. Simple math suggested Goldman Sachs would follow Penn Central into bankruptcy.
But Gus Levy understood something his predecessors hadn't: reputation was worth more than any single profit or loss. He made a decision that stunned Wall Street—Goldman would use its own capital to buy back the worthless Penn Central paper from clients, absorbing losses that could destroy the firm to preserve relationships that might save it.
The buyback cost Goldman $20 million—40% of its capital—and took three years to complete. Partners who'd expected million-dollar bonuses received IOUs. The firm borrowed against everything—its Exchange seat, its building, even partners' personal assets. John Whitehead, who'd become co-senior partner with Levy, later recalled: "We were technically insolvent for eighteen months. If clients had demanded immediate payment, we couldn't have met it."
Yet the strategy worked. Clients who might have sued were stunned by Goldman's willingness to absorb losses it wasn't legally obligated to take. Institutional investors who'd written off their Penn Central losses found Goldman checks in the mail. The firm that should have been destroyed by Penn Central became the only Wall Street house to emerge with its reputation enhanced.
The crisis forced a fundamental restructuring. Goldman created its first real risk management department, with power to override business heads. The commercial paper business was completely reorganized, with multiple levels of credit approval required for any issuer over $10 million. Most importantly, the firm adopted what became known as the "14 principles"—Sidney Weinberg's philosophy codified into corporate commandments, beginning with "Our clients' interests always come first."
With disaster averted, Levy and Whitehead could focus on transformation. They recognized that Goldman's partnership structure, while fostering loyalty, limited growth. Competitors like Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch were expanding rapidly, fueled by external capital Goldman couldn't match. The solution: grow through innovation rather than capital, pioneering businesses that required brains over balance sheets.
The international expansion accelerated dramatically. London, reopened in 1970, grew from five employees to fifty within three years. Tokyo, opened in 1974, immediately became profitable by focusing on Japanese institutions seeking U.S. investments. Zurich followed in 1974, capturing Swiss banking relationships. But unlike American competitors who tried to transport Wall Street wholesale overseas, Goldman adapted to local cultures. London partners wore Savile Row suits and joined gentlemen's clubs. Tokyo partners learned Japanese, attended tea ceremonies, built relationships over decades not quarters.
The true transformation came in trading. Levy's block trading operation, successful in the 1960s, exploded in the 1970s. The concept evolved from simple stock blocks to complex risk arbitrage, merger arbitrage, and eventually proprietary trading. Goldman would commit its own capital, betting on market movements, merger completions, interest rate changes. The firm that had nearly died from speculation was becoming a speculation machine—but with a difference.
The key innovation was what Goldman called "flow trading"—using client orders to inform proprietary bets. When Fidelity wanted to sell a million shares of IBM, Goldman would buy the block, but traders would also position the firm's own capital to profit from the likely market impact. When merger talks leaked, Goldman's arbitrage desk would accumulate positions before announcements. The ethical lines were blurry, but the profits were clear: trading revenues grew from $10 million in 1970 to over $500 million by 1985.
New divisions sprouted like mushrooms after rain. Fixed Income, created in 1972, grew from trading government bonds to creating complex derivatives. The mortgage desk, launched in 1978, pioneered the securitization of home loans—bundling mortgages into tradeable securities that would later play a starring role in the 2008 crisis. The commodities division, J. Aron & Company, acquired in 1981, brought Goldman into oil, gold, and currency trading. Each division operated like a separate firm, with its own culture, compensation, and risk limits.
The numbers tell the story of explosive growth. Partnership capital increased from $50 million in 1970 to $500 million by 1985. Revenues grew from $200 million to $2 billion. The firm that had forty-three partners in 1969 had seventy-five by 1985. But most tellingly, trading revenues surpassed investment banking revenues for the first time in 1985—Goldman Sachs was no longer primarily an advisory firm but a trading house.
The cultural implications were profound. Investment bankers, who'd dominated Goldman since Sidney Weinberg, suddenly found traders earning multiples of their compensation. A successful M&A partner might earn $2 million; a star trader could make $10 million. The old Goldman—relationship-focused, client-centric, conservative—was being eaten alive by a new breed: mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists who viewed markets as puzzles to solve rather than relationships to nurture.
Robert Rubin, who joined in 1966 and ran risk arbitrage, embodied this new Goldman. Yale and Harvard Law educated but with a gambler's instinct, Rubin built a trading empire within Goldman. His arbitrage desk would take massive positions—$500 million, $1 billion—betting on merger completions. When deals succeeded, profits were enormous. When they failed, losses could cripple the firm. Rubin's solution: hedge everything, diversify positions, never bet the firm on a single trade.
The technology revolution transformed Goldman's capabilities. The firm spent $100 million on computer systems in the 1980s—more than its total capital in 1970. Traders could execute thousands of transactions daily, positions updated in real-time, risk calculated continuously. The firm that had used paper ledgers now had more computing power than most universities.
Goldman Sachs Asset Management, created in 1988, represented another evolution. Why just advise clients on investments when you could manage their money directly? Starting with $1 billion under management, GSAM grew to $10 billion within five years. The fees were steady, predictable, everything trading revenues weren't. It also created conflicts—was Goldman recommending investments because they were best for clients or because Goldman earned management fees?
The compensation culture evolved dramatically. The old partnership model—where partners shared profits according to seniority—gave way to "eat what you kill" systems where producers kept percentages of their revenues. A twenty-eight-year-old trader could out-earn senior partners if his desk was profitable enough. This created a mercenary culture—producers jumped between firms for better packages, loyalty evaporated, the partnership ethos Sidney Weinberg had cultivated seemed quaint.
Yet the partnership structure itself survived, creating a unique dynamic. While competitors went public, Goldman remained private, its capital base limited to what partners could contribute. This forced discipline—the firm couldn't take massive risks because partners' personal wealth was at stake. But it also created pressure. Partners who wanted to cash out had to sell their stakes back to the firm at book value, not market value. As Goldman's franchises became more valuable, the gap between book and market value widened, creating internal tensions.
The personalities of this era were as colorful as their profits. John Weinberg, Sidney's son, maintained his father's client focus while trading exploded around him. Stephen Friedman, cerebral and cautious, tried to balance trading aggression with banking tradition. Jon Corzine, who started in fixed income, built a trading empire that would eventually consume the firm's culture—and nearly the firm itself.
By the 1990s, Goldman faced a paradox. It was simultaneously the most successful and most stressed firm on Wall Street. Revenues exceeded $5 billion, profits topped $1 billion, the partnership was worth over $5 billion at book value—probably $20 billion at market. But competitors with public currency were acquiring assets, expanding globally, taking risks Goldman couldn't match. The firm that had survived Penn Central through partnership solidarity was being strangled by partnership limitations.
The debate over going public, simmering since the 1980s, reached boiling point. Younger partners wanted liquidity, older partners feared losing culture. Traders argued public capital was essential for competing; bankers worried about quarterly earnings pressure. The firm that had transformed itself from advisory to trading faced another transformation—from partnership to corporation.
The decision would split the partnership, nearly destroy the firm in 1994, and ultimately create the modern Goldman Sachs—publicly traded, massively capitalized, and powerful beyond Marcus Goldman's wildest dreams. But first, it would have to survive one more near-death experience, this time self-inflicted. The lessons of Penn Central—never bet the firm, always protect the franchise—would be forgotten in the pursuit of profits that seemed too good to refuse.
VI. Going Public & Peak Power (1999–2006)
December 3, 1998. Jon Corzine stood before 221 Goldman Sachs partners in the Windows on the World restaurant atop the World Trade Center. Outside, Manhattan glittered in winter twilight. Inside, history was being made. After 129 years as a private partnership—the last major investment bank to maintain that structure—Goldman Sachs would go public. The vote had been close, bitter, personal. Partners who'd worked together for decades no longer spoke. But the die was cast. The firm Marcus Goldman founded in a basement would soon trade on the exchange he'd joined in 1896.
"This isn't the end of Goldman Sachs," Corzine declared, his voice catching slightly. "It's the beginning of something greater."
Within six months, he'd be forced out in a coup that would shock Wall Street. The man who'd engineered Goldman's IPO wouldn't be there to ring the opening bell.
The road to that moment had been paved with near-catastrophe. In 1994, Goldman had attempted its first IPO, pulling back at the last moment when the bond market crashed, erasing $1.5 billion in trading profits. Partners who'd already made plans for their newfound wealth—houses in the Hamptons, yachts, art collections—watched it evaporate. The firm that prided itself on reading markets had misread the biggest decision in its history.
But 1998 was different. The Asian financial crisis and Russian default had created chaos, but also opportunity. Long-Term Capital Management, the hedge fund that had nearly destroyed the global financial system, had been rescued with Goldman's participation—and Goldman had profited from the chaos, earning $2.6 billion that year. The partnership was worth an estimated $20 billion. The only question was how to unlock that value.
Corzine, who'd become senior partner in 1994, championed the IPO with evangelical fervor. A trader at heart, he understood that Goldman needed capital to compete. Morgan Stanley had gone public in 1986, Lehman in 1994, Bear Stearns in 1985. They were using public money to build trading operations that dwarfed Goldman's. The firm that had pioneered block trading was being out-traded by competitors with deeper pockets.
The opposition was led by John Whitehead and John Weinberg—the "two Johns" who'd run Goldman through the 1980s. They argued that public ownership would destroy Goldman's culture. Quarterly earnings pressure would force short-term thinking. The partnership ethos—where everyone's money was at risk—would vanish. Goldman would become just another public company, its soul sold for stock options. The internal battle was vicious. Partners meetings devolved into shouting matches. Lifetime friendships ended. One partner reportedly threw a coffee mug at another. The final vote, in June 1998, was 221 in favor, 21 against—overwhelming on paper but representing deep divisions that would never fully heal.
The coup against Corzine came swiftly and ruthlessly. In January 1999, just months before the IPO, Hank Paulson orchestrated a palace revolt. Paulson, who'd run investment banking with military precision, believed Corzine was too undisciplined, too willing to bet the firm on his trading instincts. The Executive Committee voted to strip Corzine of his sole leadership, forcing him to share power with Paulson. Corzine, seeing the writing on the wall, negotiated his exit—a $400 million payout that would fund his political career as New Jersey senator and governor.
On May 4, 1999, Goldman Sachs offered 69 million shares at $53, raising $3.657 billion. The stock opened at $76 and closed at $70.375, a 33% first-day gain. The market valued Goldman at $33 billion—more than Merrill Lynch, nearly as much as Morgan Stanley. Partners who'd been worth millions on paper were suddenly worth tens of millions in tradeable stock. The janitor's assistant's firm had become one of the world's most valuable financial institutions.
Hank Paulson became Chairman and CEO immediately after the IPO, succeeding Corzine. A Christian Scientist who didn't drink, didn't smoke, and ran five miles every morning, Paulson represented a radical departure from Goldman's trading cowboys. He'd built the investment banking division into a powerhouse, competing head-to-head with Morgan Stanley for the most prestigious deals. Now he had the entire firm.
Paulson's Goldman was a study in contradictions. Publicly, he preached the old values—clients first, long-term thinking, reputation above profits. Privately, he unleashed the trading desks, allowing them to take positions that would have horrified Sidney Weinberg. The firm that had nearly died from leverage in 1929 was leveraging itself 25:1, 30:1, sometimes 35:1. But now it wasn't partnership capital at risk—it was shareholder money, other people's money, nobody's money.
The trading transformation was dramatic. Lloyd Blankfein, who'd joined Goldman in 1982 after Harvard Law, had built the commodities division from a backwater into a profit machine. Starting at J. Aron, the precious metals dealer Goldman acquired in 1981, Blankfein turned commodity trading into financial engineering. Oil wasn't just oil—it was futures, options, swaps, structured products that could be sliced, diced, and sold to anyone who'd buy them.
The firm's expansion continued with landmark deals like underwriting Microsoft's IPO and advising General Electric on its RCA acquisition. By 2000, Goldman was everywhere—advising on the AOL-Time Warner merger, the largest in history; underwriting IPOs for every dot-com with a business plan; trading billions in currencies, commodities, and derivatives daily.
The mortgage machine deserves special attention. Goldman's mortgage desk, led by Dan Sparks and later Josh Birnbaum, transformed home loans into trading instruments. They didn't just securitize mortgages—they created synthetic CDOs, CDO-squareds, instruments so complex their own creators couldn't fully explain them. By 2006, Goldman was originating, packaging, and trading over $100 billion in mortgage securities annually.
The numbers from this era are staggering. Revenues grew from $5.4 billion in 1999 to $37.7 billion in 2006. Net income increased from $2.7 billion to $9.4 billion. The stock price rose from $53 to over $200. Return on equity exceeded 30%. Goldman partners who'd kept their stock from the IPO were worth hundreds of millions. Lloyd Blankfein, who'd become president and COO in 2004, was earning over $50 million annually.
The government connections during this period created the "Government Sachs" mythology. Robert Rubin had become Treasury Secretary under Clinton. Jon Corzine was elected senator. Joshua Bolten became White House Chief of Staff. Stephen Friedman chaired the National Economic Council. But the ultimate revolving door moment came in 2006: Hank Paulson left Goldman to become Treasury Secretary, selling his $700 million in Goldman stock tax-free thanks to government ethics rules.
The culture had transformed completely. The old Goldman—partners eating lunch together, working late but going home to families—was replaced by a 24/7 trading floor where analysts slept under desks and vice presidents divorced at twice the national average. The firm that had hired from City College now recruited exclusively from Harvard, Princeton, Wharton. Starting salaries for twenty-two-year-old analysts exceeded $100,000; bonuses could double that.
Technology became Goldman's secret weapon. The firm spent over $2 billion annually on technology by 2006, building trading systems that could execute millions of trades in microseconds. The legendary "secret sauce" was actually thousands of programmers building algorithms that could spot arbitrage opportunities faster than competitors. When Sergey Aleynikov, a Goldman programmer, left for a competitor in 2009 and allegedly stole code, the FBI arrested him within days—the code was that valuable.
Risk management, supposedly Goldman's strength, became increasingly fictional. Value at Risk models showed maximum daily losses of $100-200 million, but positions were so complex, so interrelated, that nobody really knew the exposure. The firm that had survived 1929 by understanding its risks was now too complex for anyone to fully comprehend.
Goldman was later accused of deliberately underpricing IPOs to generate profits for favored clients, who would return these profits through increased business—a practice that defrauded both issuing companies and retail investors.
By 2006, at the peak of its power, Goldman Sachs seemed invincible. It dominated investment banking, led in trading, was building a massive asset management business. Alumni ran the Treasury, the New York Stock Exchange, the New York Fed. The firm Marcus Goldman started with $500 was worth $100 billion. Goldman executives owned apartments in 15 Central Park West, houses in the Hamptons, jets that shuttled between offices in London, Hong Kong, and New York.
But within the mortgage trading desk, something was shifting. Michael Swenson, a trader who'd joined from Morgan Stanley, was looking at the numbers and not liking what he saw. Default rates were rising. Housing prices were stalling. The mortgages Goldman was packaging and selling were increasingly toxic. In December 2006, David Viniar, Goldman's CFO, called a meeting that would save the firm and destroy its reputation: it was time to get short the housing market.
What happened next would make Goldman Sachs either the smartest firm on Wall Street or the most cynical, depending on your perspective. The firm that had spent years building the mortgage machine was about to bet billions on its destruction. And when the edifice collapsed, Goldman would be standing in the rubble, not only surviving but profiting from the catastrophe that destroyed its competitors and nearly destroyed capitalism itself.
VII. The Financial Crisis: Survival & Controversy (2007–2009)
December 14, 2006. Conference Room 30B at 85 Broad Street. David Viniar, Goldman's CFO, stared at the spreadsheet showing the firm's mortgage positions. The firm had just lost $100 million in a single day on subprime positions. For a firm that routinely made or lost that much before lunch, it shouldn't have mattered. But something in the pattern disturbed him. He turned to the dozen traders and risk managers assembled around the table and said ten words that would save Goldman Sachs: "Let's be aggressive distributing things because there'll be very good opportunities."
Translation: Get the hell out. Now.
What followed was one of the most profitable trades in Wall Street history—and one of the most controversial. While Goldman was privately "getting short" the housing market, it was simultaneously selling mortgage securities to clients, sometimes the very instruments it was betting against. The firm that preached "clients' interests always come first" was about to test that principle like never before.
The architect of Goldman's survival was not Lloyd Blankfein, who'd become CEO in June 2006, but a collection of traders who saw what others missed. Michael Swenson, Josh Birnbaum, and Dan Sparks of the mortgage desk had been tracking deterioration in subprime mortgages since 2004. They noticed borrowers defaulting not after years but after months. They saw mortgage brokers openly discussing fraud. They watched as lending standards disappeared entirely—NINJA loans (No Income, No Job, No Assets) were being packaged into AAA-rated securities.
By February 2007, Goldman had not just reduced its mortgage exposure but had gone massively short through a variety of instruments. The firm bought credit default swaps on mortgage securities—essentially insurance that paid off when mortgages failed. It shorted the ABX index, a benchmark for subprime mortgages. Most controversially, it created synthetic CDOs like ABACUS 2007-AC1, which were designed to fail, sold them to clients, then bet against them.
The ABACUS deal would become infamous. Goldman allowed hedge fund manager John Paulson (no relation to Hank), who was betting against housing, to help select the mortgages in the CDO, ensuring they were likely to default. Goldman then sold the CDO to institutional clients, including German bank IKB and Dutch bank ABN AMRO, without disclosing Paulson's role. When the mortgages predictably failed, Paulson made $1 billion. The clients lost everything.
By summer 2007, as Bear Stearns hedge funds collapsed and credit markets froze, Goldman was perfectly positioned. The firm reported record earnings of $3.2 billion in the third quarter of 2007, while competitors were writing down billions in mortgage losses. Blankfein's compensation for 2007: $68 million, the highest ever for a Wall Street CEO. The firm that had nearly died in 1929 from bad bets was now profiting from everyone else's bad bets.
But Goldman had one massive exposure it couldn't hedge: AIG. The insurance giant had sold credit default swaps on mortgage securities to every major bank, including $20 billion to Goldman. If AIG failed, Goldman's hedges were worthless. Throughout 2007 and 2008, Goldman aggressively demanded collateral from AIG, draining the insurer's cash reserves. By September 2008, Goldman had collected $7.5 billion in collateral, but AIG owed much more.
September 15, 2008. Lehman Brothers collapsed. Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America. AIG teetered on bankruptcy. That afternoon, Lloyd Blankfein attended an emergency meeting at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Around the table sat the CEOs of every major bank, the Treasury Secretary (former Goldman CEO Hank Paulson), and the New York Fed President Timothy Geithner. The topic: saving American capitalism.
Blankfein would later admit what he said that day: "We were toast." Despite all of Goldman's hedges, preparations, and profits, the firm couldn't survive a complete market collapse. If AIG failed, if credit markets stayed frozen, if depositors panicked, Goldman Sachs—the firm that had survived everything—would disappear within days. The solution came on September 21, 2008. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley converted to bank holding companies, placing themselves under Federal Reserve regulation. The move was both humiliating—investment banks had prided themselves on being unregulated—and essential. As bank holding companies, they could access the Fed's discount window, borrow unlimited funds, and most importantly, receive TARP bailout money.
Two days later came the masterstroke. On September 23, 2008—two days after Goldman Sachs became a bank holding company—the firm announced a private offering to Berkshire Hathaway whereby Berkshire Hathaway would purchase $5 billion in special preferred shares that would pay a 10 percent annual dividend. Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha, was investing in Goldman at its darkest hour. The message to markets was unmistakable: if Buffett believed in Goldman, everyone should.
The Buffett deal was expensive—Goldman had the option of buying back the shares for $5 billion plus a one-time dividend of $500 million, and Berkshire Hathaway would also acquire warrants to buy an additional $5 billion of common stock at $115 per share. But it achieved its purpose. The day after the announcement, Goldman Sachs completed a public offering of 46.7 million shares of common stock at $123 per share for proceeds of $5.75 billion in an offering that was well-received and oversubscribed.
The government bailout followed swiftly. In October 2008, Goldman received $10 billion from TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Blankfein didn't want it—Goldman insisted it didn't need the money—but Paulson forced all major banks to take TARP funds to avoid stigmatizing the weak ones. Goldman would repay the TARP money in June 2009, with interest, eager to escape government restrictions on compensation.
But the real controversy centered on AIG. When the government bailed out the insurance giant with $180 billion, it paid out credit default swaps at 100 cents on the dollar. Goldman received $12.9 billion from this backdoor bailout—money it claimed it didn't need because its positions were hedged. Critics argued this was impossible; if AIG had failed, Goldman's hedges with other counterparties would have been worthless as those counterparties would have failed too.
The phone records would become toxic. During the week of the AIG bailout, Hank Paulson spoke to Lloyd Blankfein twenty-four times. The Treasury Secretary, who'd run Goldman two years earlier, was in constant contact with his successor while deciding whether to save AIG—and by extension, Goldman itself. Paulson claimed he'd recused himself from Goldman-specific decisions, but the calls suggested otherwise.
Meanwhile, Goldman's trading desks were printing money from the chaos. The firm made over $100 million in trading revenues on ninety-eight separate days in 2009. Its traders, understanding that the Fed would pump unlimited liquidity into markets, positioned accordingly. While unemployment soared and foreclosures mounted, Goldman earned $13.4 billion in 2009, paying out $16.2 billion in compensation. The average Goldman employee earned $498,000 that year.
The public relations disaster was immediate and lasting. Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone article calling Goldman "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity" became the defining image. Protesters occupied Zuccotti Park, blocks from Goldman's headquarters. "Government Sachs" became shorthand for crony capitalism. The firm that had survived the crisis through foresight, hedging, and perhaps a bit of insider knowledge had become the symbol of everything wrong with Wall Street.
The profits from the crisis were extraordinary. Goldman's "Big Short" netted approximately $4 billion. The firm earned billions more from trading in the volatile markets of 2008-2009. The Buffett investment, while expensive, provided crucial confidence when Goldman needed it most. By 2010, Goldman's stock had recovered to pre-crisis levels.
But the damage to Goldman's reputation was permanent. The firm that had prided itself on client service was exposed as betting against the very products it sold to clients. The ABACUS scandal led to a $550 million SEC settlement in 2010—the largest penalty ever paid by a Wall Street firm at that time. Goldman neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing, but the details that emerged in congressional testimony were devastating.
The most damaging moment came in April 2010 when Goldman executives testified before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Senator Carl Levin grilled Lloyd Blankfein about selling "shitty deals" to clients—using Goldman's own internal emails as evidence. Fabrice Tourre, the Goldman vice president who'd structured ABACUS, had written about selling "these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades" to "widows and orphans."
Blankfein's defense was technically accurate but morally bankrupt: Goldman was a market maker, not a fiduciary. The firm had no obligation to act in clients' best interests. It could sell securities while simultaneously betting against them. This was how markets worked. But to the public watching on television, it sounded like an admission that Goldman's business model was built on deception.
The internal culture during the crisis revealed Goldman at its best and worst. The firm's risk management had been superb—it had seen the crisis coming and positioned accordingly. Its traders had been brilliant, making money in the most chaotic markets in history. Its government connections had proven invaluable, ensuring survival when pure market forces might have meant destruction.
But the crisis also exposed the contradictions at Goldman's core. The firm that proclaimed "our clients' interests always come first" had profited from client losses. The company that claimed to be about long-term relationships had embraced short-term trading profits. The partnership ethos that Sidney Weinberg had cultivated had been replaced by a bonus culture where individual profit trumped collective reputation.
The numbers tell the story of survival and profit. Goldman's stock, which had fallen to $47 in November 2008, recovered to $170 by April 2010. The firm that had admitted it was "toast" without government help had not just survived but thrived. Return on equity in 2009 exceeded 20%. Compensation per employee remained the highest on Wall Street.
But something fundamental had changed. Pre-crisis, Goldman had been respected, even admired—the smartest firm on Wall Street, the place every MBA wanted to work. Post-crisis, it became a symbol of greed, exploitation, and the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington. The firm had won the financial game but lost the reputation war.
Lloyd Blankfein would later reflect on this period with characteristic ambiguity. Asked if Goldman had done anything wrong, he said, "We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret. We were a participant in the market, but we survived the crisis better than others." It was the perfect Goldman answer—acknowledging error without admitting guilt, expressing regret without accepting responsibility.
The survival of Goldman Sachs through the financial crisis was a masterclass in risk management, political connections, and ruthless self-preservation. The firm had seen the crisis coming, positioned itself to profit, and when threatened with extinction, leveraged every relationship and rule to ensure survival. It had done exactly what it was designed to do—make money and survive.
But the cost was enormous. The firm that Marcus Goldman had built on trust, that Sidney Weinberg had rebuilt on relationships, that had once represented the best of American capitalism, had become its villain. The vampire squid had survived, even prospered, but at the price of its soul. The question that would define Goldman's next decade was whether that soul could be recovered—or whether, in modern finance, having a soul was simply a luxury Goldman could no longer afford.
VIII. Reckoning & Regulatory Aftermath (2010–2016)
April 27, 2010. Senate Hearing Room 106. Lloyd Blankfein adjusted his microphone, staring at the panel of senators who would spend the next eleven hours dissecting Goldman Sachs's role in the financial crisis. Behind him sat rows of protesters holding signs: "JAIL THE BANKSTERS." Senator Carl Levin held up a stack of internal Goldman emails, his voice dripping with disgust: "You sold your clients a deal you internally described as 'shitty.' How do you explain that?"
Blankfein's response would become infamous: "In our market-making function, we are not acting as an investment advisor. We are acting as a principal."
Levin exploded: "You're trying to sell a shitty deal—your words—and you're saying that's consistent with your values?"
The hearing was political theater, but the damage was real. Every American with a television watched Wall Street's most powerful CEO essentially admit that Goldman had no obligation to protect clients from bad investments—even ones Goldman itself was betting against. The firm that had survived the financial crisis financially intact was being destroyed reputationally in real-time.
The SEC settlement had been announced just eleven days earlier. Goldman agreed to pay $550 million to settle charges that it misled investors in the ABACUS CDO—Companies selling undervalued stock and their initial consumer stockholders were both defrauded by this practice. The firm neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing, but the facts spoke for themselves. Goldman had let John Paulson help design a CDO destined to fail, sold it to clients without disclosure, and profited when it collapsed.
The congressional testimony revealed a cultural rot that went beyond ABACUS. Internal emails showed Goldman salespeople referring to CDOs as "junk," "dogs," "big old pig," and most memorably, "shitty deals." Thomas Montag, who ran Goldman's securities business, had written in June 2007: "Boy, that timberworld deal is a shitty deal. Just don't tell [the client] that, of course."
But the most damaging revelation came from Fabrice Tourre, the Goldman vice president who'd structured ABACUS. His emails, read aloud in the Senate, painted a picture of Wall Street at its most cynical. He'd written to his girlfriend: "The whole building is about to collapse anytime now... Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab... standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities!!!"
Blankfein's defense—that market-making was different from advising, that Goldman had no fiduciary duty to clients—was legally accurate but morally catastrophic. Senator Susan Collins asked the question that cut to the heart: "Do you have a duty to act in the best interests of your clients?"
Blankfein's response was a masterpiece of evasion: "I believe we have a duty to serve our clients well."
The public heard something different: Goldman Sachs would screw you if it could profit from it.
The regulatory response was swift and severe. The Dodd-Frank Act, passed in July 2010, included the Volcker Rule, which limited banks' ability to trade for their own accounts—a direct attack on Goldman's business model. The firm that had made billions from proprietary trading would have to find new ways to generate profits.
Goldman created the Business Standards Committee in January 2010, a direct response to public outrage. The committee, chaired by board member and former Fannie Mae CEO James Johnson, was tasked with reviewing every aspect of Goldman's business practices. The resulting report, released in January 2011, contained 39 recommendations, including enhanced disclosure, client suitability standards, and structured product reviews.
But the legal settlements kept coming. In 2014, Goldman paid $3.15 billion to the Federal Housing Finance Agency to resolve claims related to mortgage securities sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The firm didn't admit wrongdoing but acknowledged that it had provided "incomplete information" about the mortgages underlying the securities.
The biggest settlement came in 2016. Goldman agreed to pay $5.06 billion to resolve federal and state claims related to its mortgage business: $2.39 billion in civil penalties, $1.8 billion in relief to underwater homeowners and distressed borrowers, and $875 million to settle claims from other entities. It was the last major bank to settle mortgage crisis charges, having fought longer and harder than competitors.
The statement of facts accompanying the settlement was devastating. Goldman had known the mortgages it was securitizing were trash. One Goldman mortgage trader had written in 2006: "Loan performance is GRIM... we should close this dog." Another had said: "Real bad feeling across the board about how we mark our positions." Yet Goldman had continued packaging and selling these securities to clients.
The cultural transformation during this period was profound and painful. Goldman instituted mandatory training on conflicts of interest, client responsibilities, and reputational risk. Every email was monitored, every trade scrutinized. The freewheeling culture that had generated massive profits was replaced by compliance paranoia.
Compensation became a battleground. Public outrage over banker bonuses forced Goldman to restructure pay. In 2009, the firm had set aside $16.2 billion for compensation—$498,000 per employee—while unemployment hit 10%. The backlash was fierce. Goldman responded by paying senior executives in stock that couldn't be sold for five years, implementing clawback provisions, and capping cash bonuses.
The partner election process, once Goldman's most sacred ritual, became contentious. The firm that had 483 partners in 2000 had shrunk to 375 by 2010. Being "tapped" as a partner had meant lifetime security; now partners were regularly "de-partnered" if they didn't generate sufficient revenue. The partnership that Sidney Weinberg had nurtured was becoming just another corporate title.
Internal dissent grew louder. Greg Smith's March 2012 New York Times op-ed "Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs" became a sensation. Smith, a Goldman executive director, wrote: "The environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it... It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off."
Smith described a culture where making money trumped everything: "It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don't trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn't matter how smart you are."
Goldman's response was swift and dismissive, calling Smith a "disgruntled employee" whose views didn't reflect the firm's culture. But privately, the op-ed terrified management. If a mid-level employee felt this way, what did clients think?
The numbers during this period tell a story of resilience despite reputational damage. Revenues remained robust: $39.2 billion in 2010, $28.8 billion in 2011, $34.2 billion in 2012. Return on equity, while lower than pre-crisis peaks, stayed respectable: 11.5% in 2010, 5.8% in 2011, 10.7% in 2012. The firm that everyone loved to hate was still printing money.
But the business mix was changing. Trading revenues, once Goldman's engine, were declining due to Volcker Rule restrictions and reduced risk appetite. Investment banking was resurging, with Goldman regularly topping league tables for M&A and equity underwriting. Asset management was growing steadily, reaching $1.18 trillion in assets under supervision by 2014.
The international expansion accelerated as Goldman sought growth beyond toxic American politics. The firm deepened its presence in Asia, particularly China, where Goldman had been operating since 1994. European operations expanded despite the sovereign debt crisis. By 2015, nearly 40% of Goldman's revenues came from outside the Americas.
Technology became both an opportunity and threat. Goldman invested heavily in electronic trading platforms, algorithmic trading systems, and digital infrastructure. But technology also meant fewer traders were needed. The firm that had employed 30,000 people in 2007 had roughly the same headcount in 2015 despite significantly higher revenues.
The leadership during this period reflected Goldman's challenges. Lloyd Blankfein, once celebrated as the trader who'd saved Goldman, became a liability. His tone-deaf comments—like doing "God's work" by providing liquidity to markets—reinforced Goldman's image as arrogant and out-of-touch. Yet he survived, partly because he'd made partners rich, partly because no obvious successor existed.
Gary Cohn, Goldman's president and COO, represented the firm's future—or so it seemed. Dyslexic, from a middle-class Cleveland family, Cohn had started in commodities and worked his way up through sheer determination. He was everything Blankfein wasn't: tall, charismatic, comfortable with media. Many assumed he'd succeed Blankfein.
But the most significant change was invisible to outsiders: Goldman's risk appetite had fundamentally shifted. The firm that had bet billions against housing wouldn't take similar risks again. Value at Risk limits were reduced. Proprietary trading was eliminated. The wild cowboys who'd generated massive profits (and losses) were replaced by steady executives focused on client service.
By 2016, Goldman had paid over $9 billion in mortgage-related settlements. The legal bills exceeded the profits from the "Big Short." The reputational damage was incalculable. The firm that had been Wall Street's gold standard was now its symbol of greed.
Yet Goldman survived, even thrived in some ways. The settlements, while massive, were manageable given Goldman's earnings power. The regulatory restrictions, while limiting, forced Goldman to focus on sustainable businesses. The reputational damage, while severe, didn't stop clients from hiring Goldman for the biggest deals.
The paradox of post-crisis Goldman was that everyone hated the firm but still needed it. Corporations hired Goldman for IPOs because Goldman could still command the highest prices. Governments hired Goldman to manage bond offerings because Goldman had the best distribution. Even clients who'd been burned in the crisis came back because, simply put, Goldman was still the best at what it did.
As 2016 drew to a close, Goldman faced a new challenge: the election of Donald Trump as president. The populist who'd campaigned against Wall Street immediately began filling his administration with Goldman alumni. Steve Mnuchin, Goldman partner from 1994 to 2002, became Treasury Secretary. Gary Cohn left Goldman to become Director of the National Economic Council. Steve Bannon, who'd worked at Goldman in M&A, became chief strategist.
The revolving door that had been Goldman's strength was becoming its weakness. Every Goldman appointment reinforced the narrative that the firm controlled government. The vampire squid mythology, which Goldman had hoped would fade, was reinforced by Trump's Goldman-heavy administration.
Lloyd Blankfein, who'd survived the financial crisis, the congressional hearings, the settlements, and the cultural revolution, now faced his biggest challenge: finding a successor who could lead Goldman into a new era. The firm needed someone who could generate profits without generating headlines, who could serve clients without seeming to screw them, who could be powerful without appearing evil.
That person would turn out to be David Solomon, a investment banker who moonlighted as a DJ. His appointment would signal Goldman's attempt to reinvent itself once again—from trading powerhouse to technology-enabled financial services company. Whether that transformation would succeed, whether Goldman could escape its vampire squid reputation, remained to be seen.
But one thing was certain: the Goldman Sachs that emerged from the regulatory reckoning was fundamentally different from the firm that had entered the financial crisis. More regulated, less profitable, more careful, less aggressive. The question was whether this new Goldman could maintain its position as Wall Street's premier firm, or whether in trying to be less evil, it would become merely ordinary.
IX. The Solomon Era & Modern Goldman (2018–Present)
The Hamptons, July 2017. David Solomon, Goldman's co-head of investment banking, stood behind the DJ booth at a charity event, electronic dance music pulsing through the speakers. The crowd—hedge fund managers, tech entrepreneurs, society fixtures—danced to his set. Someone filmed it on their phone. Within hours, the video was viral: a Goldman Sachs executive spinning records as "DJ D-Sol."
Harvey Schwartz, Solomon's internal rival for the CEO position, watched the video from his office at 200 West Street. He turned to an aide: "I'm competing against a DJ?"
Six months later, Schwartz abruptly resigned, clearing Solomon's path to the throne. The man who'd spent his nights mixing beats would spend his days mixing Goldman's business model, attempting the most radical transformation in the firm's history.
Solomon officially became CEO on October 1, 2018, inheriting a firm that was profitable but strategically adrift. In 2024, Goldman increased net revenues by 16 percent year-over-year to $53.5 billion; grew earnings per share by 77 percent to $40.54; improved return on equity by over 500 basis points to 12.7 percent; improved efficiency ratio by 11.5 percentage points to 63.1 percent; and generated total shareholder return of 52 percent. But in 2018, the numbers were less impressive. Trading revenues were stagnant. Investment banking faced fierce competition. The stock price had barely moved in five years.
Solomon's background was pure investment banking—the opposite of trading-focused Blankfein. He'd joined Goldman from Bear Stearns in 1999, built the financing business, then run investment banking with an iron fist. His management style was controversial: demanding, sometimes brutal, but undeniably effective. Under his leadership, Goldman's investment banking consistently ranked first or second globally.
The DJ persona was carefully cultivated. Solomon performed at nightclubs in New York, Miami, even Mykonos. He released singles on Spotify. Critics called it ridiculous—a 60-year-old banker pretending to be David Guetta. But Solomon understood something his predecessors hadn't: Goldman needed to seem human, relatable, even fun. The vampire squid needed a makeover.
His first major decision was quintessentially un-Goldman: launching Marcus, a consumer banking platform named after the firm's founder. Goldman Sachs, which had spent 150 years serving corporations and the ultra-wealthy, would now offer savings accounts to regular Americans. The minimum deposit: $1.
The Marcus strategy was ambitious and controversial. Goldman would use its balance sheet and regulatory permissions to gather deposits, paying above-market interest rates to attract customers. These deposits would fund Goldman's traditional businesses at lower cost than wholesale funding. Meanwhile, Goldman would build a consumer lending business, using technology to assess credit risk.
By 2019, Marcus had attracted $50 billion in deposits and originated $5 billion in personal loans. The Apple Card partnership, announced in March 2019, seemed to validate the strategy. Goldman would be the bank behind Apple's first credit card, instantly acquiring millions of affluent customers. Solomon declared it "the most successful credit card launch ever. "But reality was harsher. Goldman Sachs was very liberal in approving people for Apple Card, leading to the bank having to charge off balances at a much higher rate than banks like Chase and Bank of America. Goldman had a 2.93% net charge-off rate, double Chase and Bank of America. The consumer banking division, Platform Solutions, saw a net loss of $667 million in Q2 2023 alone, and combined with Q1's $248 million loss, was already $915 million in the red for 2023.
The total damage was staggering. Goldman Sachs lost over $6 billion pre-tax since the beginning of 2020 on a big chunk of its consumer-lending businesses, including its credit cards. The Marcus experiment, which was supposed to transform Goldman into a Main Street bank, had become a Wall Street catastrophe.
The 1MDB scandal added to Solomon's woes. Between 2012 and 2013, Goldman had helped Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund raise $6.5 billion through bond offerings, earning $600 million in fees. But the fund was a massive fraud, with billions stolen by Malaysian officials and their accomplices. Goldman's due diligence had been negligent at best, complicit at worst. The settlement was devastating. In October 2020, Goldman agreed to pay $2.9 billion to U.S. authorities and $3.9 billion total globally, the largest penalty ever under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The bank's board clawed back $174 million in compensation from current and former executives, including Solomon and Blankfein. The Malaysian subsidiary pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges, a criminal conviction that haunted Goldman's reputation.
Solomon's handling of the crisis was controversial. He blamed "rogue employees" and claimed senior management didn't know about the bribes. But internal emails suggested red flags were ignored in pursuit of fees. The firm that prided itself on risk management had failed at the most basic due diligence.
The work culture transformation under Solomon was equally controversial. He tried to soften Goldman's brutal reputation, limiting junior banker hours to "only" 80 per week after several high-profile deaths from overwork. He instituted "Saturdays off" policies that were widely mocked when bankers simply worked from home. The firm that had glorified 100-hour weeks was trying to seem humane while still demanding inhuman commitment.
The technology transformation accelerated under Solomon. Goldman spent billions building Marcus's technology stack, developing APIs for transaction banking, creating automated trading systems. The firm hired thousands of engineers, competing with Google and Facebook for talent. By 2023, nearly a quarter of Goldman's employees were in engineering roles.
But the Platform Solutions division housing Marcus and Apple Card continued bleeding money. The division lost more than $3 billion since the start of 2020. In 2022 alone, Goldman's net loss rate on credit cards was 3.46%, nearly double that of competitors like JPMorgan (1.47%) and Bank of America (1.60%). The consumer banking experiment that was supposed to transform Goldman had become an expensive disaster.
The breaking point came in 2023. Apple reportedly proposed withdrawing from the credit card partnership within 12-15 months. Goldman desperately sought buyers for the Apple Card portfolio, but potential acquirers knew Goldman was desperate. The firm that had negotiated from strength for 150 years was begging competitors to take its mistakes off its hands.
Solomon's DJ career became increasingly embarrassing. A 2020 performance in the Hamptons during COVID lockdowns, where he performed maskless before a packed crowd, generated fierce criticism. Goldman employees, working from home under strict protocols, watched their CEO party like a twenty-something influencer. The DJ D-Sol persona, meant to humanize Goldman, had become a liability.
The partnership changes under Solomon reflected broader cultural shifts. The firm that had 483 partners in 2000 had grown to over 400 by 2024, but the title meant less. Partners were regularly "de-partnered" if they didn't generate sufficient revenue. The lifetime sinecure had become just another corporate title, albeit one that still commanded seven-figure compensation. Yet despite all the missteps, Goldman's core businesses remained extraordinarily profitable. In 2024, Goldman increased net revenues by 16 percent year-over-year to $53.5 billion; grew earnings per share by 77 percent to $40.54; improved return on equity by over 500 basis points to 12.7 percent; and generated total shareholder return of 52 percent. The firm that was supposedly dying was generating record profits.
The investment banking franchise, Solomon's strength, dominated league tables. Goldman regularly ranked first or second in global M&A, equity underwriting, and debt capital markets. The trading businesses, while less dominant than pre-Volcker Rule, still generated billions in revenues. Asset management reached $3.14 trillion in assets under supervision, generating steady management fees.
But the contradictions in Solomon's Goldman were stark. The firm preached innovation while abandoning its biggest innovation (Marcus). It talked about serving Main Street while retreating to Wall Street. It promoted work-life balance while maintaining a culture that destroyed personal lives. Solomon himself embodied these contradictions—the DJ who demanded military discipline, the innovator who killed innovation when it threatened profitability.
The partnership election in 2024 reflected these tensions. Over 600 managing directors competed for roughly 80 partnership slots. The winners would earn millions; the losers would likely leave for competitors. The process, once a celebration of collective achievement, had become a Hunger Games-style competition that pitted colleagues against each other.
The diversity initiatives Solomon championed were equally contradictory. Goldman pledged to increase female and minority representation but continued to recruit primarily from elite universities that skewed white and wealthy. The firm that Sidney Weinberg had opened to anyone with talent had become more closed than ever, despite surface-level diversity metrics.
As 2024 drew to a close, Solomon faced mounting pressure. Activist investors questioned the consumer banking disaster. Employees complained about compensation despite record profits. Regulators continued investigating various scandals. The stock price, while up significantly, lagged peers who hadn't attempted Solomon's failed transformation.
The question facing Goldman wasn't whether Solomon would survive—CEOs of profitable firms usually do—but whether Goldman could maintain its position as Wall Street's premier franchise. The firm that had survived the Great Depression, the Penn Central crisis, and the 2008 financial crisis now faced a different threat: irrelevance.
Technology companies were eating into traditional banking. Private equity firms were competing for deals. Retail investors were trading on Robinhood, not through Goldman. The firm that had been essential to American capitalism risked becoming just another bank, profitable but unremarkable.
Solomon's response was typical Goldman: double down on strengths while quietly abandoning weaknesses. The consumer banking experiment was essentially dead, with Marcus reduced to a deposit-gathering operation. The Apple Card partnership would end as soon as legally possible. The focus returned to what Goldman had always done best: serving the ultra-wealthy and mega-corporations.
But something had been lost in the journey. The partnership culture that had defined Goldman for over a century was gone, replaced by public company quarterly earnings management. The firm that had been willing to bet everything on its convictions had become risk-averse, focused on regulatory compliance over innovation. The Goldman Sachs that Marcus Goldman founded, that Sidney Weinberg saved, that Lloyd Blankfein had made notorious, had become merely corporate.
Whether this was evolution or decay depended on perspective. For shareholders, Solomon's Goldman delivered returns. For employees, it provided wealth if not satisfaction. For clients, it offered competent if expensive services. But for those who remembered what Goldman had been—a partnership where the best and brightest changed the world through finance—Solomon's Goldman felt like a well-dressed corpse, maintaining the appearance of life while the soul had long since departed.
The future remained uncertain. Would Goldman find new life in technology, transforming into a fintech company that happened to have a banking license? Would it retreat further into traditional investment banking, accepting slow decline but steady profits? Or would some external shock—another financial crisis, a regulatory crackdown, a technology disruption—force the kind of radical transformation that had saved Goldman before?
Solomon, for his part, remained optimistic. In his 2024 letter to shareholders, he wrote: "I am very confident about the trajectory of Goldman Sachs. We are ready to continue serving our clients and drive stronger returns for shareholders." But confidence had always been Goldman's strength—and occasionally, its weakness. The firm that had been confident about Trading Corporation in 1929, about Penn Central in 1970, about mortgages in 2007, was now confident about its future.
History suggested that confidence at Goldman Sachs was often the precursor to catastrophe. But history also showed that Goldman had an uncanny ability to transform catastrophe into opportunity. The vampire squid, despite everything, refused to die.
X. Playbook: The Goldman Way
Inside Conference Room 32A at 200 West Street, a ritual unfolds every Monday morning at 7:00 AM sharp. The Executive Committee—twelve individuals who collectively control more capital than most sovereign nations—gather around a mahogany table that once belonged to Sidney Weinberg. No phones allowed. No assistants. Just the people who run Goldman Sachs, dissecting every position, every risk, every opportunity with the intensity of surgeons performing a heart transplant. This is where the Goldman Way becomes manifest—not in mission statements or corporate values, but in decisions that move billions and shape markets.
The Partnership Mentality in a Public Company
The great paradox of modern Goldman is maintaining partnership culture without an actual partnership. When the firm went public in 1999, it didn't just change its capital structure—it fundamentally altered its DNA. Yet Goldman has performed an elaborate theater to preserve the partnership mystique.
The biennial partnership election remains Goldman's most sacred ritual. Every two years, roughly 80 managing directors from a pool of 600 are "tapped" for partnership. The process is Byzantine: multiple rounds of reviews, cross-evaluations, secret ballots. Partners evaluate candidates on "commercial contribution" (how much money you make), "culture carrier" status (do you bleed Goldman blue), and "franchise enhancement" (are you making Goldman more powerful).
But here's what outsiders miss: becoming a Goldman partner in the public company era is both more and less than it was in the private partnership. More, because the financial rewards can be astronomical—partners routinely earn $5-10 million annually, with top producers making $20-30 million. Less, because you're not really a partner in any legal sense. You're an employee with a fancy title and restricted stock units that vest over years.
The real power of the partnership model isn't legal—it's psychological. Partners still feel ownership, even if they don't have it. They work 80-hour weeks not because they must, but because they're defending their franchise. The partnership title creates a tournament mentality where everyone below partner is competing furiously, and everyone at partner level is paranoid about being "de-partnered."
This psychological ownership drives behavior in ways that compensation alone never could. Partners will sacrifice personal deals for firm-wide benefit because their identity is tied to Goldman's success. They'll work through divorces, miss children's birthdays, destroy their health—not for money, which they already have in abundance, but for the preservation of status within the partnership hierarchy.
Risk Management: When to Bet the Firm vs. Hedge Everything
Goldman's risk management philosophy can be summarized in three words that appear nowhere in official documents: "Paranoid but greedy." The firm that nearly died in 1929 from excessive leverage and again in 2008 from being "toast" has developed a schizophrenic approach to risk that somehow works.
The first principle: Information asymmetry is everything. Goldman doesn't take risks on things it doesn't understand better than competitors. When the firm entered commodities through J. Aron, it spent years learning physical markets before trading derivatives. When it built its mortgage machine, it hired the best structurers from every competitor. Goldman's edge isn't taking more risk—it's understanding risk better.
The Value at Risk (VaR) models that every bank uses? Goldman invented most of them, then figured out their flaws, then traded against firms still using the original versions. The firm employs more Ph.D.s in mathematics and physics than most universities. These aren't just quants building models—they're intellectual warriors finding weaknesses in everyone else's models.
But the genius of Goldman's risk management isn't in the models—it's in the overrides. Every significant position requires approval from multiple committees. The Executive Committee can and does overrule trading desks. When David Viniar called that December 2006 meeting about mortgage exposure, he wasn't looking at models—he was sensing a pattern that felt wrong. That intuition, institutionalized through committee structures, saved Goldman billions.
The hedging philosophy is equally sophisticated. Goldman doesn't just hedge positions—it hedges hedges. During the financial crisis, the firm had credit default swaps on AIG, but also had collateral agreements, but also had hedges on the collateral, but also had reserves against the hedges failing. This belt-and-suspenders-and-another-belt approach costs millions in normal times but saves billions in crises.
Yet Goldman knows when to bet big. The block trading innovation in the 1960s, the commodities expansion in the 1980s, the "Big Short" in 2007—these weren't hedged, cautious positions. They were massive, concentrated bets based on conviction. The key is that these bets are rare, thoroughly analyzed, and never large enough to destroy the firm if wrong.
The Power of the Alumni Network ("Government Sachs")
No aspect of Goldman's power is more controversial or more misunderstood than its alumni network. The numbers are staggering: three Treasury Secretaries (Robert Rubin, Hank Paulson, Steven Mnuchin), countless central bank governors, finance ministers, and regulators worldwide. But the network's power isn't in formal influence—it's in shared mental models.
Goldman alumni think alike because Goldman trains them to think alike. The two-year analyst program is essentially intellectual boot camp. Analysts learn not just financial modeling but a worldview: markets are efficient, capital allocation drives prosperity, regulation should be minimal but enforced, moral hazard must be avoided except when systemic risk threatens.
This shared worldview means that when a Goldman alum becomes Treasury Secretary and another runs the New York Fed and another advises the President, they don't need to coordinate—they naturally reach similar conclusions. During the 2008 crisis, Paulson didn't need to tell other Goldman alumni what to do. They all saw the same problem and reached for the same solutions.
The network also operates as an intelligence system. Goldman alumni at corporations feed deal flow back to the firm. Alumni at competitors share market intelligence at alumni dinners. Alumni in government provide early warning of regulatory changes. This isn't conspiracy—it's relationship management elevated to art.
But the network's greatest power is in recruitment. The best students at Harvard Business School want to work at Goldman partly because they see the alumni success stories. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle: Goldman gets the best talent, who become successful, who enhance Goldman's reputation, which attracts the best talent.
Client Relationships: Conflict or Symbiosis?
Goldman's client philosophy, encoded in the first business principle—"Our clients' interests always come first"—is simultaneously the firm's greatest lie and deepest truth. The lie is obvious: Goldman repeatedly trades against clients, sells them "shitty deals," and extracts maximum fees for minimal service. The truth is subtler: Goldman's clients know this and still come back.
The relationship works because Goldman delivers something unique: access to the entire global capital system. When a corporation needs to raise $10 billion in 24 hours, only a handful of firms can do it, and Goldman does it best. When a government needs to restructure sovereign debt, Goldman has the relationships, expertise, and capital to make it happen. When a billionaire wants to sell a company without anyone knowing until announcement, Goldman's discretion is absolute.
Clients aren't buying friendship—they're buying competence. The firm that would sell you a toxic CDO would also defend your hostile takeover with fanatical intensity. The bankers who overcharge for IPOs also ensure maximum valuations. It's a transactional relationship where both sides understand the rules: Goldman will maximize its profit, but it will also maximize your outcome within that constraint.
The real client segmentation at Goldman isn't by size or industry—it's by sophistication. Sophisticated clients (major corporations, sovereign wealth funds, ultra-high-net-worth individuals) get white-glove service because they can go elsewhere. Unsophisticated clients (smaller companies, retail investors through wealth management) get standardized products at premium prices because they can't or won't shop around.
Talent Strategy: Up or Out, Golden Handcuffs
Goldman's human capital management is brutally efficient. The "up or out" policy means you're either promoted or pushed out within defined timeframes. Analysts have two years, maybe three. Associates have three to four years. Vice Presidents have four to six years to make Managing Director. Managing Directors have multiple cycles to make partner. At each level, roughly 20-30% advance, 70-80% leave.
This creates tremendous pressure but also tremendous opportunity. A 22-year-old analyst knows that in 15 years, they could be a partner earning $10 million annually—if they survive. This tournament structure attracts the most competitive, ambitious people in finance, then pits them against each other in intellectual combat.
The compensation structure creates golden handcuffs at every level. Bonuses are paid largely in restricted stock that vests over years. If you leave, you forfeit unvested compensation. A Managing Director earning $2 million annually might have $5 million in unvested stock. Leaving means walking away from millions.
But the real retention tool is the partnership election. Managing Directors will endure almost anything for the chance at partnership. The title is worth more than money—it's validation, acceptance into the most exclusive club in finance. Once someone makes partner, they rarely leave voluntarily. The psychological cost of giving up that identity is too high.
The Trading vs. Banking Tension
The eternal conflict within Goldman is between traders and bankers. Bankers see themselves as relationship managers, advisors, the intellectual elite. Traders see themselves as risk-takers, profit generators, the economic engine. This tension is productive—it prevents either culture from dominating completely.
The power has shifted over decades. Under Sidney Weinberg, bankers ruled. Under Gus Levy and Robert Rubin, traders ascended. Under Paulson, balance was attempted. Under Blankfein, traders dominated. Under Solomon, bankers are resurgent. These shifts aren't just about personnel—they reflect Goldman's adaptation to market conditions.
When markets are volatile and capital is scarce, traders generate the profits. When markets are stable and deals are plentiful, bankers drive revenues. Goldman's genius is maintaining both capabilities at world-class levels, shifting emphasis as conditions change without destroying either franchise.
Capital Allocation and ROE Optimization
Goldman's approach to capital is almost mystical in its complexity. The firm runs thousands of businesses, from Australian dollar swaps to Zambian sovereign debt, each with its own capital allocation. The Executive Committee reviews every significant use of capital weekly, measuring not just return on equity but risk-adjusted return on regulatory capital.
The optimization isn't just mathematical—it's political. Profitable businesses get more capital, but strategic businesses get protected capital even when returns lag. The consumer banking disaster lost billions, but it continued receiving capital for years because senior management believed in the strategy. This flexibility to fund long-term bets while maintaining short-term discipline is rare in public companies.
Regulatory Arbitrage as Competitive Advantage
Goldman doesn't fight regulation—it masters it. The firm employs more regulatory experts than some regulators. When Dodd-Frank was being written, Goldman had teams analyzing every provision, finding loopholes, designing products that would comply with the letter while violating the spirit.
The Volcker Rule banned proprietary trading but allowed market-making. Goldman simply redefined most of its trading as market-making. Capital requirements favor certain assets? Goldman shifts its mix. Stress tests penalize specific risks? Goldman hedges precisely those risks while taking others the tests miss.
This isn't evasion—it's optimization. Goldman follows every rule while minimizing their impact. Competitors who fight regulation waste resources and generate scrutiny. Goldman quietly adapts, turns regulatory compliance into competitive advantage, and moves on.
The playbook works because it's not really about individual tactics—it's about institutional capability. Goldman can execute these strategies because it attracts the best people, gives them the best training, provides the best resources, and demands the best results. The firm Sidney Weinberg rebuilt on meritocracy remains a meritocracy, even if the definition of merit has evolved.
XI. Bear vs. Bull Case
Bull Case: The Unassailable Franchise
Picture the Monday morning meeting in any Fortune 500 boardroom when a transformative deal is being contemplated—a merger that will define the company's next decade, a restructuring that will determine survival, an IPO that will create generational wealth. The CEO turns to the CFO and asks, "Who do we hire?" In at least half these rooms, probably more, the answer is Goldman Sachs. Not because they like Goldman, not because Goldman is cheap, but because when you absolutely cannot afford to fail, you hire the firm that's been doing this since Ulysses Grant was president.
This is the bull case in its essence: Goldman Sachs has built an unassailable franchise that would take competitors decades and tens of billions to replicate, if they could replicate it at all.
Start with the raw numbers. The firm generated $53.5 billion in revenue in 2024 with a 12.7% return on equity—not spectacular by historical standards but remarkable given the regulatory constraints, rate environment, and competition. The investment banking franchise regularly ranks first or second globally across M&A, equity capital markets, and debt capital markets. When the biggest deals happen—Microsoft buying Activision, Exxon acquiring Pioneer—Goldman is usually on one side, often both.
The talent pipeline remains unmatched. Goldman receives over 300,000 applications annually for roughly 3,000 positions. The acceptance rate is lower than Harvard's. These aren't just smart people—they're the specific type of incredibly driven, competitively obsessive, intellectually gifted individuals who thrive in Goldman's pressure-cooker environment. The two-year analyst program has become a finishing school for American capitalism's future leaders.
The technology investments, while expensive, are paying off. Goldman spends over $3 billion annually on technology—more than most tech companies. The firm's trading systems execute millions of transactions daily with minimal human intervention. The risk management systems process more data than the NSA. This isn't just automation—it's the creation of a technological moat that smaller competitors can't cross.
Asset and Wealth Management, often overlooked, has quietly become a juggernaut. With $3.14 trillion in assets under supervision, Goldman is one of the world's largest asset managers. The steady management fees from this business—over $10 billion annually—provide ballast against volatile trading and banking revenues. The ultra-high-net-worth wealth management business, serving individuals with $50 million or more, has pricing power that defies economic logic.
The international franchise gives Goldman options other American banks lack. While US regulations constrain domestic activities, Goldman operates freely in London, Hong Kong, Singapore. The firm generates 40% of revenues outside the Americas. As wealth creation shifts to Asia and the Middle East, Goldman is already there, has been for decades, with relationships that new entrants can't quickly build.
The brand, tarnished as it may be, remains incredibly powerful. "Goldman Sachs" on a deal tombstone still means something. Companies pay premium fees for that imprimatur. Investors participate in Goldman-led offerings knowing the firm's reputation is at stake. Even the vampire squid mythology adds to the mystique—you might hate Goldman, but you respect its power.
The regulatory moat, paradoxically, protects Goldman. The compliance costs, capital requirements, and regulatory scrutiny that constrain Goldman destroy smaller competitors. A startup investment bank can't afford the hundreds of millions in annual compliance costs. The regulations meant to constrain Too-Big-To-Fail banks have made them Too-Big-To-Challenge.
Most importantly, Goldman has proven repeatedly that it can reinvent itself. From commercial paper to investment banking to trading to asset management, the firm has successfully transformed its business model multiple times. The consumer banking failure? A $6 billion tuition payment for learning what doesn't work. The firm that survived 1929, Penn Central, and 2008 will adapt to whatever comes next.
Bear Case: The Slow-Motion Decline
But walk into a different room—a venture capital partnership in Palo Alto, a private equity firm in Greenwich, a family office in Singapore—and ask the same question about hiring financial advisors. Increasingly, the answer isn't Goldman Sachs. It's a boutique that provides better service, a technology platform that's faster and cheaper, or they'll do it themselves with a team poached from Goldman. The bear case isn't that Goldman will collapse—it's that Goldman is becoming just another big bank, profitable but unremarkable, like a financial services utility with a prestigious history.
The numbers tell a troubling story beneath the headlines. Yes, revenue was $53.5 billion, but that's on $1.7 trillion in assets. The return on assets is barely 1%. The efficiency ratio, while improved, is still 63.1%—meaning Goldman spends 63 cents to generate each dollar of revenue. Compare that to top-tier technology companies with 20-30% efficiency ratios, and Goldman looks like a bloated bureaucracy.
The talent pipeline is fracturing. The best computer science graduates go to Google or start companies, not to Goldman's technology division. The top MBAs increasingly choose private equity or venture capital over investment banking. The two-year analyst program that was once a golden ticket is now seen as an anachronism—why work 100-hour weeks for $150,000 when you can join a tech company for similar pay and actual work-life balance?
The compensation pressure is unsustainable. Goldman paid $33.8 billion in compensation in 2024—63% of net revenues. As revenues face pressure from competition and regulation, maintaining these compensation levels means accepting lower returns for shareholders. Cut compensation, and talent flees to competitors. It's a trap with no obvious escape.
Technology isn't a moat—it's a threat. Every function Goldman performs is being unbundled by technology companies. Robinhood democratized trading. Square provides small business banking. Blockchain could eliminate clearing and settlement. AI could replace junior bankers. Goldman is spending billions to digitize existing processes while startups are inventing entirely new paradigms.
The regulatory scrutiny will only intensify. Every financial crisis leads to more regulation, and Goldman is always at the center of the crisis. The next scandal—and there will be a next scandal—will bring more restrictions, more capital requirements, more compliance costs. The political environment, whether populist right or progressive left, is hostile to Wall Street, and Goldman is Wall Street's avatar.
Competition is intensifying from every direction. JPMorgan has more capital and better technology. Boutique advisory firms provide better service without conflicts. Private equity firms are competing for deals. Asian banks are rising. European banks are consolidating. Goldman is fighting multi-front wars with diminishing advantages.
The cultural decay is accelerating. The partnership culture that created Goldman's edge is gone, replaced by corporate bureaucracy. The firm that prided itself on long-term thinking now manages to quarterly earnings. The best talent stays just long enough to vest their restricted stock, then leaves for better opportunities. Goldman is becoming what it always despised: ordinary.
The Apple Card disaster reveals a deeper problem: Goldman doesn't understand businesses beyond its core. The firm lost $6 billion trying to become a consumer bank. What other expensive mistakes await as Goldman tries to reinvent itself? The Marcus debacle suggests Goldman's vaunted intelligence doesn't translate beyond traditional investment banking and trading.
ESG and reputational headwinds are real and growing. Younger workers don't want to work for "the vampire squid." Institutional investors increasingly consider ESG factors, and Goldman consistently scores poorly. Universities are divesting from firms that finance fossil fuels. The reputational damage from repeated scandals has a cumulative effect that Goldman underestimates.
The next financial crisis could be existential. Goldman survived 2008 because the government couldn't let it fail. Next time might be different. Political will for bailouts has evaporated. The tools used in 2008—TARP, Fed facilities, forced mergers—might not be available. Goldman's complexity and interconnectedness, once sources of strength, could become fatal vulnerabilities.
The Verdict: Schrödinger's Squid
The truth about Goldman Sachs exists in superposition—it's simultaneously the bull and bear case until observed through the lens of specific timeframes and metrics. For shareholders seeking steady returns over the next five years, Goldman is probably a reasonable investment. For employees seeking career fulfillment, it's increasingly a poor choice. For clients needing complex financial engineering, it remains unmatched. For society seeking a more equitable financial system, it's part of the problem.
The firm will likely muddle through, generating decent returns while slowly losing its distinctiveness. The Goldman Sachs of 2034 will be profitable, powerful, and completely different from the Goldman Sachs of today—just as today's Goldman would be unrecognizable to Sidney Weinberg or Marcus Goldman. Whether that evolution represents success or failure depends entirely on your perspective.
The vampire squid will survive, but it might evolve into something more like a well-fed octopus—still impressive, still dangerous, but no longer the apex predator of the financial seas. For a firm that once aspired to world domination, mere survival might be the greatest failure of all.
XII. Epilogue & Lessons
Lloyd Blankfein keeps a photograph on his desk. Not of his family, not of himself ringing the NYSE bell, but of Sidney Weinberg's funeral in 1969—thousands of mourners packed into Temple Emanu-El, from presidents to janitors, united in grief for a five-foot-four Brooklyn dropout who'd saved Goldman Sachs. When asked why he keeps this particular photo, Blankfein's answer was characteristically cryptic: "To remember what we were, and what we weren't supposed to become."
What Goldman Teaches Us About American Capitalism
Goldman Sachs is American capitalism's perfect mirror—reflecting both its genius and its pathologies. The firm's evolution from Marcus Goldman's commercial paper operation to today's global colossus tracks perfectly with America's transformation from an industrial economy to a financialized one. When America made things, Goldman financed factories. When America traded things, Goldman traded everything. When America securitized its future, Goldman packaged and sold it.
The meritocracy that Goldman represents is both real and illusory. Real, because the firm has consistently promoted talent over pedigree—Sidney Weinberg from janitor to CEO, Lloyd Blankfein from housing projects to corner office. Illusory, because today's Goldman recruits almost exclusively from elite universities, perpetuating privilege while claiming to reward merit. The American Dream that Marcus Goldman embodied—immigrant arrives with nothing, builds empire—is simultaneously validated and betrayed by modern Goldman.
The firm's relationship with government reveals capitalism's dirty secret: the free market is never truly free. Goldman's alumni network in government doesn't just influence policy—it writes policy. The firm that preaches market discipline accepts government bailouts. The institution that champions competition benefits from regulations that destroy competitors. Goldman Sachs proves that in American capitalism, proximity to power matters more than productive capacity.
The Price of Being Systemically Important
"Too Big to Fail" isn't just about size—it's about interconnection. Goldman's tentacles extend into every corner of global finance. The firm is counterparty to thousands of institutions, advisor to hundreds of governments, manager of trillions in assets. Its failure wouldn't just be a corporate bankruptcy—it would be a systemic event, potentially triggering cascading failures across the financial system.
This systemic importance is both Goldman's greatest strength and its ultimate curse. The strength is obvious: implicit government backing, regulatory forbearance, the ability to take risks knowing taxpayers provide the ultimate backstop. The curse is subtler: constant scrutiny, political vilification, regulatory constraints that prevent the risk-taking that once defined Goldman.
The moral hazard is inescapable. Goldman's executives make decisions knowing that catastrophic failure will be socialized while extraordinary success will be privatized. This creates perverse incentives: take massive risks during boom times, knowing the government will intervene during busts. The firm that nearly failed in 2008 paid record bonuses in 2009, not despite the bailout but because of it.
Can Wall Street Culture Evolve?
The cultural question haunting Goldman—and all of Wall Street—is whether the industry can evolve beyond its primitive accumulation phase. The culture that treats hundred-hour weeks as badges of honor, that measures human worth in bonus dollars, that sacrifices everything for the next deal—is this necessary for financial excellence, or merely a destructive anachronism?
Solomon's attempts at cultural reform—DJ performances, work-life balance initiatives, diversity targets—feel cosmetic because they are cosmetic. The fundamental culture—competitive, crushing, money-obsessed—remains unchanged because the business model demands it. You can't generate 30% returns on equity with European work schedules and Silicon Valley perks.
Yet the younger generation increasingly refuses to accept this bargain. The best talent has options—tech companies, startups, private equity—that offer comparable compensation without the cultural brutality. Goldman's culture might evolve not through enlightenment but through necessity, forced to change by talent market dynamics rather than moral awakening.
The Next Crisis: Will Goldman Survive Again?
Every financial crisis follows a pattern: innovation creates complexity, complexity masks risk, risk accumulates unseen, revelation triggers panic, panic requires intervention. Goldman has mastered this cycle, positioning itself to profit from each phase. But past performance, as Goldman's own disclaimers note, doesn't guarantee future results.
The next crisis likely won't resemble the last. It might emerge from cryptocurrencies Goldman doesn't understand, from AI systems Goldman can't control, from geopolitical shocks Goldman can't hedge, from climate changes Goldman can't model. The firm's risk management, superb for known risks, might prove useless against unknown unknowns.
More fundamentally, the political economy that enabled Goldman's survival might not exist next time. The bipartisan consensus that supported bank bailouts has shattered. The Federal Reserve's credibility is questioned. The international cooperation that coordinated the 2008 response has fragmented. Goldman might execute perfectly and still fail because the system that sustains it fails.
Final Reflections on Power, Money, and Survival
Goldman Sachs endures because it understands something fundamental: in capitalism, money isn't just a medium of exchange—it's the medium of power. The firm doesn't just move money; it creates, destroys, and transforms it. This alchemical ability to transmute abstract numbers into concrete reality—turning debt into wealth, risk into return, information into advantage—is Goldman's true product.
The firm's survival through multiple existential crises reveals an institutional intelligence that transcends any individual. Goldman Sachs is less a company than an organism, adapting to environmental changes with evolutionary efficiency. The traders who replaced bankers, the technology that replaced traders, the algorithms that might replace everyone—each transformation preserves the essential Goldman while discarding the obsolete.
Yet this very adaptability might be Goldman's ultimate weakness. An institution that stands for everything stands for nothing. The firm that began with Marcus Goldman's simple principle—judge character, provide capital, share success—has become so complex that its own executives can't fully understand it. The business principles carved into conference room walls feel less like guides than archaeological artifacts, remnants of a simpler time when banking was about relationships rather than algorithms.
The tragedy of Goldman Sachs isn't that it became evil—evil implies intentionality that bureaucracy lacks. The tragedy is that it became exactly what it was incentivized to become: a profit-maximizing machine optimized for its environment. Every scandal, every crisis, every moral compromise was the logical result of rational actors responding to systemic incentives. Goldman Sachs is what happens when intelligence serves power without wisdom to guide it.
The lesson, then, isn't about Goldman Sachs at all. It's about us—the society that created the incentives, the regulators who failed to constrain them, the clients who enable them, the employees who perpetuate them. Goldman Sachs is our monster, and like all monsters, it reveals more about its creators than itself.
Marcus Goldman died believing he'd built something noble—a bridge between capital and ambition that would lift immigrant strivers into American prosperity. Sidney Weinberg died believing he'd saved something essential—a meritocracy where talent mattered more than birthright. Lloyd Blankfein retired claiming he'd done "God's work"—a statement so tone-deaf it became self-parody.
David Solomon will likely retire claiming he modernized Goldman for the digital age, though what that means remains unclear. His successor will face the same eternal challenge: how to generate extraordinary profits without destroying the franchise that generates them. It's a challenge that has no permanent solution, only temporary accommodations with changing circumstances.
The story of Goldman Sachs, in the end, is the story of American capitalism itself—brilliant and brutal, innovative and destructive, essential and excessive. The firm will likely survive whatever comes next, not because it deserves to but because it has mastered the art of making itself necessary. The vampire squid, having wrapped itself around the face of humanity, has become indistinguishable from the system it feeds upon.
Whether that system itself will survive is another question entirely. But if American capitalism does endure, Goldman Sachs will be there—financing its triumphs, profiting from its crises, and embodying all its contradictions. The firm that Marcus Goldman founded in a basement will continue its journey, neither good nor evil but simply inexorable, like capitalism itself.
The final lesson may be the simplest: in a system that measures everything in money, the firm that moves the most money will always matter. Goldman Sachs matters because we've built a world where Goldman Sachs must matter. Until we build a different world, the vampire squid will continue to feed, grow, and endure.
And somewhere in a conference room at 200 West Street, young analysts are running models, updating pitch books, and dreaming of partnership—just as their predecessors did in Sidney Weinberg's time, just as their successors will long after David Solomon is forgotten. The machine grinds on, indifferent to individual ambitions or societal concerns, pursuing its prime directive with algorithmic efficiency: make money, manage risk, survive.
That, more than any principle carved in marble or encoded in mission statements, is the Goldman Way.
StockTwits
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
Amazon Music
Audible
YouTube
Castbox
Pocket Casts