Colleagues,

I know many of us are still recovering from the shock of Greg Smith’s public resignation in yesterday’s New York Times. Many of you were hurt by his allegations of a drastic change in Goldman’s culture. The firm had become something vulgar and morally decrepit, and the subtext was that many of us were directly to blame.

But you know what, guys? He’s right. Which is why I’m publicly announcing that I, too, am leaving Goldman Sachs, effective immediately.

Greg’s right, folks. This place used to have character and humility. We held things sacred — things other than profit. I remember when we opened the first Goldman Sachs soup kitchen during the 1980s — I was skeptical, but the old guard around here showed me that an investment bank is more than its balance sheet. Now, you may remember the soup kitchen primarily for its unfortunate shutdown at the hands of municipal health inspectors — but not me. I remember it as an inspiration.

And inspired I was — within a decade, we’d set up dozens of Goldman Sachs orphanages around the city. Sure, many of the orphans came from families that couldn’t afford their care after we foreclosed on them — but we provided those kids with a future. And, thanks to our Goldman Tots program, we even got to teach the tykes some good old-fashioned work ethic.

No more. The Goldman Sachs I loved has turned into a heartless profit-seeking monster. The abrasive, insufferable egos. The inflated sense of self-worth. The scheme to turn the orphans into complex tranched financial instruments. It’s all been too much. I haven’t been this shocked since I discovered that Humphrey Bogart was harboring a gambling den in Casablanca, a revelation from which I’ve honestly never fully recovered. What happened to Goldman’s charitable soul? I’m not sure when the word ‘profit’ became sacrosanct to this investment house, but now that it has, there’s no going back. This used to be an investment bank, by God, not some money-worshipping Xanadu. Have you no shame?

So that’s it for me. For you, this is a wake-up call. Consider Goldman’s precipitous moral fall, and try to pick yourselves up. As for me, I’m off to Citigroup. Those guys still believe in something.

Sincerely,

B. Roach

Senior Vice President, Orphan Operations


 
 
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