Goldman Bankers Arming Themselves Against Public, Literally
Dan Carter
According to Alice Schroeder of Bloomberg.com, senior employees at Goldman Sachs have “loaded up on firearms” to protect themselves from a prospective populist uprising. Paranoid? Or do they know something we don’t?
“I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” a friend recently told Schroeder. This unnamed friend swore on the character of a top Goldman banker who applied for a gun permit from the local police department. He went on to say that executives at the firm “are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.”
Sounds a bit like a “Mad Max” scenario. But the New York Police Department confirmed that some of the bankers Schroeder had inquired about did have pistol permits. The NYPD, unfortunately, declined to name names.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs and Warren Buffett have teamed up to invest $500 million to provide struggling small business owners across the country with capital and even college scholarships. This attempt to boost the tarnished public image of the banking industry is being called “$10,000 Small Business.”
But Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein isn’t relying on PR to save his skin. Instead, he installed a security gate at his house in the Hamptons right before Bear Stearns collapsed. Coincidence? Schroeder believes that this reveals a pattern:
So maybe other senior people at Goldman Sachs have gone out and bought guns, and they know something. But what?
It seems patently obvious: Goldman is preparing to unload another monstrous round of bonuses. Instead of scaling back on their multi-million dollar end-of-the-year wads of cash in an effort to quell a bit of the outrage, Wall St. executives are challenging the public to pry their bonuses from their cold dead hands. The cowboys of finance have taken that title literally and are preparing--no daring--any would-be vigilantes to make a move. Or not, who knows?
Schroeder, for her part, is unconvinced that handguns are really an effective defense against unruly mobs of unemployed commoners. Any potential banker-gunman would need to be armed while at the office, since the glass and steel cathedrals of Wall St. are the most likely epicenter of a populist attack. But it’s virtually impossible to obtain a concealed weapon permit in New York City.
“In other words, a little humility and contrition are probably the better route,” she said.
Perhaps. But I’m still partial to a Wild West shootout.
airamerica.com/really/12-01-2009/bankers-arming-themselves-against-public-literally/