visto che è uscito anche sul FT vi posto un articolo di qualche gg fa che la dice lunga in che bisca siamo:
Ex-Goldman Exec Comes Clean On How A "Toxic And Destructive" Goldman "Rips Its Clients Off" 
     Stop us when 
this confession from  Greg Smith, a now former executive director and head of the Goldman's  United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and  Africa, sounds exactly like everything we have said about the firm over  the past 3+ years (and why we just can't wait for the next trading  "recommendation" from Tom Stolper). 
 
Excerpts from the NYT. Highlights ours.
 Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs
 Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the  firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for  10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough  to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its  identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as 
toxic and destructiveas I have ever seen it. 
 To put the problem in the simplest terms, 
the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money.  Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important  investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to  act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right  out of college that
 I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for. 
 It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was  always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around  teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our  clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great  and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just  about making money;
 this alone will not sustain a firm for so long.  It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am  sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the  culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. 
I no longer have the pride, or the belief. 
 ...
 I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look  students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.  
 When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, 
they  may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C.  Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s  culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in  the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its  long-run survival. 
 ...
 How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about  leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and  doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and  are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position  of influence.
 What are three quick ways to become a leader? a
) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients 
to  invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of  because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit.
 b) “Hunt Elephants.” In  English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of  whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to  Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a  product that is wrong for them. 
c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym. 
 Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient  of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not  one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help  clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off  of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these  meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not  part of the thought process at all. 
 It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients  off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing  directors refer to their own clients as “
muppets,”  sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab,  Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean,  come on. Integrity? It is eroding.
 I don’t know of any illegal  behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and  complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest  investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals?  Absolutely. Every day, in fact.