Greg Smith publicly resigned from Goldman Sachs investment firm earlier in this week. Since his resignation he wrote an Op-Ed piece about his reasonings behind his departure. The story follows Greg Smith, a genuinely ethical and more person caught up in an increasingly immoral wall street environment. He wrote in his paper about the companies continuing neglect for customers and clients while their main...rather only focus, was to make the most amount of money. This excessive greed is not new to investment banking firms, but they are focusing more on short term greed "from" their clients, not the traditional long term money making they earn with their clients. He states that this change has come primarily from the investment banks moving from private business to publically traded where clients look for the cheapest deals and investment firms look for the most clients. There seems to me that there is a great disconnect now between business and consumer in the investment banking world. Greg Smith saw this and was upset. The company he joined 12 years ago no longer held the same moral and ethical standards that he did.
More information can be found at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/business/a-public-exit-from-goldman-sachs-hits-a-wounded-wall-street.html?ref=opinion
-BW
I definitely agree with your statement that there is now more disconnect between business and consumer in the investment banking world. I feel it also carries over to other companies besides investment banking though. Many times when products flop it's because the company did not do a good job of ensuring it was something that the consumer wanted/needed and was in line with their moral and ethical standards
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