When Did Goldman Sachs Give Up Its “We Are The World” Shtick?

So there’s a huge Joe Hagan article in New York mag with the undeliverable-upon headline “Is Goldman Sachs Evil?” (Not answered.) Hagan sets up the article because he sees something menacing and threatening in the fact that Goldman brought a giant team to the big emergency meeting between banks led by Hank Paulson at the Federal Reserve, where the goal was to “save” AIG. But Goldman brings a huge team to a meeting of the Ladies’ Sunday Afternoon Tea Society. Any in-house conversation at Goldman involves cc:ing 20 or 30 people on an email. It’s their culture, and there’s not anything menacing in it-it’s just irritating, and probably time-wasteful. Also it provides checks and balances to over-eager ambitious types. There’s some good bits on how everyone in the firm soiled themselves when everything went to hell (there was an emergency loan program set up in-house to bail out individuals! And aggressive de-partnering of firm high-rollers!). But what’s most interesting is what’s omitted. There’s not a bit on their social programs (10,000 Women, etc.) and other corporate do-goodery (this image of corporate do-goodery was severely undermined by the company’s waves of brutal layoffs), and the members of the firm are described as uniform and clique-ey-not, as Goldman used to push for, a staff that is diverse and a giant melting pot. Now they just sound like a bunch of white men rollin’ hard to the Hamptons. Which pretty much they are.