Here’s a sensational way to resign from your job … which became an instant internet meme.
Click to read the original letter at the NY Times
Followed (very quickly) by a wonderful spoof…
Click to read a brilliant spoof at The Daily Mash
There’s no saying how much Greg Smith’s resignation-in-the-round was influenced by the very serious ‘Why I left Google’ blog post by James Whittaker … who’s gone to work for Microsoft (!)
Wow.
– P
The Daily mash is funny:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/business/french-trader-was-forced-to-work-30-hours-a-week-20080125680/
Is this harsh on Celine Dion?
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/celebrity/celine-dion-voted-'worst-ever-person'–200806241043/
Ha,
*p*
“As the losses mounted, Kerviel tried to conceal his bad trades by covering them with an intense red wine sauce, later switching to delicate pastry horns.
At one point he managed to dispose of dozens of transactions by hiding them inside vol-au-vent cases and staging a fake reception.
Wonderful!
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/efaad3e4-6d02-11e1-a7c7-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=published_links/rss/companies/feed//product#axzz1pEfQcA4V
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“Both Mr Smith and Goldman stretch the word to cover not only true client relationships in which the bank owes a fiduciary duty as an adviser but also pseudo client relationships in which the company is a market maker, trading with counterparties at arm’s length. Goldman’s “muppets” are pseudo clients at most – fellow gamblers around a poker table. Goldman will ensure that the rules of the game are accurately described – the financial equivalent of checking to be sure there are 52 cards in the deck. But it is not obliged to act in a disadvantaged counterparty’s best interests, any more than a savvy poker player is obliged to show a poor player his good cards.
When Goldman disparages unsophisticated “clients”, they are like gamblers mocking the sucker. Their sharp words are offensive, but not new. Wall Street has used such language to describe relationships with less sophisticated institutions for decades. There was the “human piranha” at Salomon Brothers in the 1980s and salesmen “ripping faces off” at Morgan Stanley in 1990s.
The biggest recent change on Wall Street has been semantic, not substantive. The word “client” has become Orwellian doublespeak. Goldman’s leaders talk uniformly about the importance of serving clients, but the firm’s salespeople know who is a client and who is a mere a counterparty. They also understand which institutions are unsophisticated and they apparently are not afraid to say so.”
Rgds,
*p*
“Goldman’s “muppets” are pseudo clients at most – fellow gamblers around a poker table.”
This reminds me of Warren Buffett’s ‘If you’re playing poker and after 15 minutes you can’t work out who the pigeon is, you are the pigeon.’
Michael Lewis’s book Liar’s Poker about his time as a trader for Saloman Brothers was a huge insight into the crooked world of these enterprises.
“Pigs go to the market to get slaughtered.” Ouch.
-P
VP Brian Griffiths… described giant paychecks for bankers as an economic necessity: “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all.” As someone somewhere once noted, “The good of the people is the cry of every tyrant”…