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Audiobook9 hours
Why I Left Goldman Sachs: A Wall Street Story
Published by Hachette Audio
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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About this audiobook
On March 14, 2012, more than three million people read Greg Smith's bombshell Op-Ed in the New York Times titled "Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs." The column immediately went viral, became a worldwide trending topic on Twitter, and drew passionate responses from former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, legendary General Electric CEO Jack Welch, and New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg. Mostly, though, it hit a nerve among the general public who question the role of Wall Street in society -- and the callous "take-the-money-and-run" mentality that brought the world economy to its knees a few short years ago. Smith now picks up where his Op-Ed left off.
His story begins in the summer of 2000, when an idealistic 21-year-old arrives as an intern at Goldman Sachs and learns about the firm's Business Principle #1: Our clients' interests always come first. This remains Smith's mantra as he rises from intern to analyst to sales trader, with clients controlling assets of more than a trillion dollars.
From the shenanigans of his summer internship during the technology bubble to Las Vegas hot tubs and the excesses of the real estate boom; from the career lifeline he received from an NFL Hall of Famer during the bear market to the day Warren Buffett came to save Goldman Sachs from extinction-Smith will take the reader on his personal journey through the firm, and bring us inside the world's most powerful bank.
Smith describes in page-turning detail how the most storied investment bank on Wall Street went from taking iconic companies like Ford, Sears, and Microsoft public to becoming a "vampire squid" that referred to its clients as "muppets" and paid the government a record half-billion dollars to settle SEC charges. He shows the evolution of Wall Street into an industry riddled with conflicts of interest and a profit-at-all-costs mentality: a perfectly rigged game at the expense of the economy and the society at large.
After conversations with nine Goldman Sachs partners over a twelve-month period proved fruitless, Smith came to believe that the only way the system would ever change was for an insider to finally speak out publicly. He walked away from his career and took matters into his own hands. This is his story.
His story begins in the summer of 2000, when an idealistic 21-year-old arrives as an intern at Goldman Sachs and learns about the firm's Business Principle #1: Our clients' interests always come first. This remains Smith's mantra as he rises from intern to analyst to sales trader, with clients controlling assets of more than a trillion dollars.
From the shenanigans of his summer internship during the technology bubble to Las Vegas hot tubs and the excesses of the real estate boom; from the career lifeline he received from an NFL Hall of Famer during the bear market to the day Warren Buffett came to save Goldman Sachs from extinction-Smith will take the reader on his personal journey through the firm, and bring us inside the world's most powerful bank.
Smith describes in page-turning detail how the most storied investment bank on Wall Street went from taking iconic companies like Ford, Sears, and Microsoft public to becoming a "vampire squid" that referred to its clients as "muppets" and paid the government a record half-billion dollars to settle SEC charges. He shows the evolution of Wall Street into an industry riddled with conflicts of interest and a profit-at-all-costs mentality: a perfectly rigged game at the expense of the economy and the society at large.
After conversations with nine Goldman Sachs partners over a twelve-month period proved fruitless, Smith came to believe that the only way the system would ever change was for an insider to finally speak out publicly. He walked away from his career and took matters into his own hands. This is his story.
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Reviews for Why I Left Goldman Sachs
Rating: 4.1283772972972965 out of 5 stars
4/5
74 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As readable as it gets with financial jargon (even has a glossary!). This is a must read for anyone who wants to know why we are in the mess we are in, about the lack of morality at the top that has filtered down so that it is all about the numbers and the price we all pay for allowing this to happen.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5An interesting, at times, look inside Wall Streets biggest player. Perhaps because I am long past the time where I believed in corporate values that the revelations in the book did not shock me. Post 2008 no one should be surprised to learn that Wall St is more interested in profits than ethics and doing the best for their clients. Oddly, enough not one word is mentioned about the occupy Wall Street movement in 2011. Even though the message from the movement was muddled it did have some idea that something was not working for many Americans.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5It was interesting. At the end he does go into the problems he sees at Goldman Sachs. But for a lot of the book he defends Goldman's behavior, even when it's clear there was wrong doing.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a great book! Those who gave it bad ratings must be somehow related to the system Smith condemns. It is really sad what happened to a once honorable company. This is a very readable book, and at times had a hard time putting it down.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very interesting story although a bit sad from inside Wall Street. Being in healthcare most of my friends and I simply just put money away with our 401K to take care of retirement needs. This book definitely reveals things of trading which I did not expect, broker acting on their own behave, the consequence of forceful persuasion of big funds and banks’ willingness to watch their clients make bad decisions. Overall, it highlights the fact at the end of day, capitalism is all about profits, not loyalty, sense of duty and trust.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Well those are 9 hours I’ll never get back. If you think this book would have any details or examples of how GS was ripping off his clients, save your money and your time.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5an insider account of how Goldman Sachs abandoned its fiduciary duties, how it has transformed from a firm giving sound advice to client's best interest to one merely facilitating financial transactions, even potentially disastrous ones to its. Author cites Goldman Sachs's involvement in helping the Greek govt hide its debt through derivatives and bankrupting the finances of some local governments and pension funds