Commentary: Greg Smith’s op-ed clearly touched a nerve
By Jon Friedman, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Why did Greg Smith’s New York Times op-ed so enrage Bloomberg L.P.’s editorial staff?
On March, 14, the New York Times published a piece written by the disgruntled Goldman Sachs GS +1.38% veteran. He all but shouted from the rooftops that Wall Street’s most iconic investment bank had lost its moral compass. Read Greg Smith’s New York Times op-ed about Goldman Sachs.
Memorably, Smith stuck the knife in deeper by revealing that bankers didn’t always have their clients’ best interests at heart and even got their kicks by calling clients “muppets,” of all things.
The piece attracted more than 3 million page views on the Times’s website NYT +0.73% by the afternoon of publication. Smith touched a nerve in the zeitgeist.
Harrumph, answered Bloomberg’s editors.
Bloomberg, whose specialty is financial news, dismissed the notion that Smith had cleansed his soul in public. Instead, the company’s editors seemed somehow offended that a man of Smith’s intelligence and experience couldn’t connect the dots and conclude that Goldman existed to make money.
Many news outlets sought to discredit Smith. A writer for Forbes.com labeled his exit as “gratuitously opportunistic,” for instance. The naysayers mocked his accomplishments and ignorance to the practices at Goldman that he decried. Read Forbes piece on Greg Smith’s salvo.
Still, no media outlet blasted Smith more forcefully (or sarcastically) than Bloomberg. whose commentary carried this blunt-as-a-spoon headline: “Yes, Mr. Smith, Goldman Sachs Is All About Making Money: View.” Read Bloomberg column on Smith’s op-ed.
Bloomberg lampooned Smith as being clueless, suggesting that “It must have been a terrible shock when Smith concluded that Goldman actually was primarily about making money.”
Ouch.
And there was this nugget, too: “Apparently when Greg Smith arrived at Goldman Sachs almost 12 years ago, the legendary investment firm was something like the Make-A-Wish Foundation — existing only to bring light and peace and happiness to the world.”
Double ouch.
Leaving no stone unturned, Bloomberg even makes fun of Smith’s record. He wrote in his piece of joining Goldman as an intern in college and being “selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video.”
Bloomberg’s comment about his legacy: “And what an employee!”
