Perhaps the most interesting segment to be found, however, is quite early on in the film. Of all the former Goldman employees to interview, the filmmakers managed to round up Steve Bannon, current CEO of the Trump campaign. Recently appointed as President Elect Trump’s Chief Strategist and Counselor, Bannon is actually one of two Goldman alums named to Trump’s cabinet thus far (the other being incoming Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin). An architect of the populist movement that fueled Trump’s rise and a controversial figure accused of being a white nationalist, Bannon is asked his thoughts on what Goldman Sachs represented to him.
“Goldman Sachs represented excellence and a meritocracy,” Bannon begins. “No matter where you came from, what your religion was, or your ethnicity. It just mattered how hard you worked.”
5 thoughts on “Comfortably Smug: World’s “Most Evil” Investment Bank Explored In Documentary”
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“No matter where you came from, what your religion was, or your ethnicity. You needed an Ivy League degree, of course.”Report
MIT would also suffice. Trying to get elite employers to hire beyond the Ivy League is an exercise in futility.Report
Good news, then. The new Labor secretary went to a public university in Ohio (and not even THE public university in Ohio), then to law school in the St. Louis area. So you’re going to have a real Man Of The People in charge there soon.
(And the new head of the EPA went to a SLAC as undergrad, which some people around here are really fond of. No overfocus on STEM for him, no siree)Report
Is it noteworthy that he became successful in the low-prestige field of fast food? I remember there was a flap a while back when naming rights of Florida Atlantic University’s football stadium were purchased by a private prison corporation. It was essentially a donation, as the owner of the company went to FAU. I remember when I read that thinking that maybe some dude from FAU managed to make that happen because the dudes from Stanford wanted nothing to do with it.
(OTOH, the chairman of the board of Yahoo is also an FAU grad. So there are limits to this theory. Though he started off as a security guard at IBM.)Report
Blackmailed America into giving them a golden parachute?
Somehow, the present tense is ignoring a lot of people that used to be around.
(OTOH, I know someone who worked for them, and had to do “extra” to get paid — apparently only Bear Stearns knew how to pay on time).Report