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'The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around

'The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.' https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405 https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-america...

dsacco 9y ago
This is an edgy soundbite, but I don’t think it contributes anything substantive to the discussion of a cryptocurrency exchange being acquired by a GS subsidiary. I could have replaced “Goldman Sachs” with “Google” and I’d have received the same amount of insight.
- zaroth 9y ago
  If you replaced GS with Google, it would still be funny, but it would no longer be true.
  - dsacco 9y ago
    The statement is sufficiently underspecified that it’s not falsifiable for any large company, which is my point. If you dislike Goldman Sachs, you’re inclined to believe it. If you don’t dislike Goldman Sachs, you’re inclined to be more skeptical about it. The description is fully open to interpretation, which means believing it is a function of ideology and identity more than facts and reality. Descriptions are only meaningful insofar as they help differentiate things. There is no precision in calling a giant financial company a vampiric squid. So what do we actually learn? It’s a total sideshow to a meaningful discussion about cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency exchanges, the evolving role of traditional financial institutions in cryptocurrency trading, or the future legitimacy of digital currencies as an asset class.
- barkingcat 9y ago
  Goldman Sachs is so much bigger than Google. Google is substantial, but it's nothing compared to Goldman Sachs. Goldman is a company that's funded entire wars, on both sides of conflicts. If you dig behind almost all revolutions, governments, and companies, on the planet chances are Goldman Sachs is behind there lurking. Google can only dream of having 1/1000th's the influence of Goldman.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Goldman Sachs is so much bigger than Google. Goldman is more politically connected (and more widely invested, at least per dollar of assets, because it's an investment bank, and not tech firm that invested in other firms incidentally), sure, but Google is much bigger by many measures (nearly 8 times the market cap, for instance.)
    - marnett 9y ago
      Market cap is not everything and saying 'politically connected' is a massive understatement - they are politics. Goldman is the more powerful institution - Google wishes they could have entire administrative cabinets flooded with ex-execs.
      - mamon 9y ago
        Market cap is especially misleading in case of investment banks: it's not about how much money they own, it's all about how much of their clients' assets they manage, and that's about $1.5 trillion. Google can only dream of having this much cash at their disposal.
        dragonwriter 9y ago
        > it's all about how much of their clients' assets they manage, and that's about $1.5 trillion. Google can only dream of having this much cash at their disposal. So, given that number, Goldman manages (and is accountable to clients, as well as their own shareholders, for the management of) a little under 2 Googles worth of market value. Google manages 1 Google worth of market value, accountable only to Google shareholders.
- vkou 9y ago
  I'd have replaced "Goldman Sachs" with "Berkshire Hathaway", or "General Electric" or "A Private Equity Firm."
- laverick 9y ago
  Circle seems to be far from a Goldman subsidiary. According to Crunchbase Goldman invested once in their Series C. If anything the Bloomberg headline seems to overplay the Goldman connection.
samsonradu 9y ago
Thanks for the link, facts aside you gotta love the author's writing style: > Rubin was the prototypical Goldman banker. He was probably born in a $4,000 suit, he had a face that seemed permanently frozen just short of an apology for being so much smarter than you, and he exuded a Spock-like, emotion-neutral exterior; the only human feeling you could imagine him experiencing was a nightmare about being forced to fly coach. It became almost a national clichè that whatever Rubin thought was best for the economy — a phenomenon that reached its apex in 1999, when Rubin appeared on the cover of Time with his Treasury deputy, Larry Summers, and Fed chief Alan Greenspan under the headline The Committee To Save The World. [...] The basic scam in the Internet Age is pretty easy even for the financially illiterate to grasp. Companies that weren't much more than potfueled ideas scrawled on napkins by uptoolate bongsmokers were taken public via IPOs, hyped in the media and sold to the public for mega-millions. It was as if banks like Goldman were wrapping ribbons around watermelons, tossing them out 50-story windows and opening the phones for bids. In this game you were a winner only if you took your money out before the melon hit the pavement.
- marnett 9y ago
  And now they get to do it again, brought to you by the financial-media institutional axis - now supporting Crypto™!
  - r00fus 9y ago
    And it's trusty sidekick The Blockchain (TM)
- kasey_junk 9y ago
  I hate Taibbi’s style. He is a descriptive writer, but after the 3rd or 4th argument you have about one of his articles you realize that it lacks the single most important thing: it’s not revealing. Two different people can read the same Taibbi article and disagree on what he meant. At the end of the day description without clarity is a bad thing.
jiggunjer 9y ago
According to wikipedia vampire squids don't feed on blood, they're bottomfeeders. The squids, that is.
cgmg 9y ago
Vampire squids don't feed on blood.
- nyolfen 9y ago
  well, neither does goldman

dsacco 9y ago

This is an edgy soundbite, but I don’t think it contributes anything substantive to the discussion of a cryptocurrency exchange being acquired by a GS subsidiary. I could have replaced “Goldman Sachs” with “Google” and I’d have received the same amount of insight.

zaroth 9y ago
If you replaced GS with Google, it would still be funny, but it would no longer be true.
- dsacco 9y ago
  The statement is sufficiently underspecified that it’s not falsifiable for any large company, which is my point. If you dislike Goldman Sachs, you’re inclined to believe it. If you don’t dislike Goldman Sachs, you’re inclined to be more skeptical about it. The description is fully open to interpretation, which means believing it is a function of ideology and identity more than facts and reality. Descriptions are only meaningful insofar as they help differentiate things. There is no precision in calling a giant financial company a vampiric squid. So what do we actually learn? It’s a total sideshow to a meaningful discussion about cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency exchanges, the evolving role of traditional financial institutions in cryptocurrency trading, or the future legitimacy of digital currencies as an asset class.
barkingcat 9y ago
Goldman Sachs is so much bigger than Google. Google is substantial, but it's nothing compared to Goldman Sachs. Goldman is a company that's funded entire wars, on both sides of conflicts. If you dig behind almost all revolutions, governments, and companies, on the planet chances are Goldman Sachs is behind there lurking. Google can only dream of having 1/1000th's the influence of Goldman.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Goldman Sachs is so much bigger than Google. Goldman is more politically connected (and more widely invested, at least per dollar of assets, because it's an investment bank, and not tech firm that invested in other firms incidentally), sure, but Google is much bigger by many measures (nearly 8 times the market cap, for instance.)
  - marnett 9y ago
    Market cap is not everything and saying 'politically connected' is a massive understatement - they are politics. Goldman is the more powerful institution - Google wishes they could have entire administrative cabinets flooded with ex-execs.
    - mamon 9y ago
      Market cap is especially misleading in case of investment banks: it's not about how much money they own, it's all about how much of their clients' assets they manage, and that's about $1.5 trillion. Google can only dream of having this much cash at their disposal.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > it's all about how much of their clients' assets they manage, and that's about $1.5 trillion. Google can only dream of having this much cash at their disposal. So, given that number, Goldman manages (and is accountable to clients, as well as their own shareholders, for the management of) a little under 2 Googles worth of market value. Google manages 1 Google worth of market value, accountable only to Google shareholders.
vkou 9y ago
I'd have replaced "Goldman Sachs" with "Berkshire Hathaway", or "General Electric" or "A Private Equity Firm."
laverick 9y ago
Circle seems to be far from a Goldman subsidiary. According to Crunchbase Goldman invested once in their Series C. If anything the Bloomberg headline seems to overplay the Goldman connection.

samsonradu 9y ago

Thanks for the link, facts aside you gotta love the author's writing style: > Rubin was the prototypical Goldman banker. He was probably born in a $4,000 suit, he had a face that seemed permanently frozen just short of an apology for being so much smarter than you, and he exuded a Spock-like, emotion-neutral exterior; the only human feeling you could imagine him experiencing was a nightmare about being forced to fly coach. It became almost a national clichè that whatever Rubin thought was best for the economy — a phenomenon that reached its apex in 1999, when Rubin appeared on the cover of Time with his Treasury deputy, Larry Summers, and Fed chief Alan Greenspan under the headline The Committee To Save The World. [...] The basic scam in the Internet Age is pretty easy even for the financially illiterate to grasp. Companies that weren't much more than potfueled ideas scrawled on napkins by uptoolate bongsmokers were taken public via IPOs, hyped in the media and sold to the public for mega-millions. It was as if banks like Goldman were wrapping ribbons around watermelons, tossing them out 50-story windows and opening the phones for bids. In this game you were a winner only if you took your money out before the melon hit the pavement.

marnett 9y ago
And now they get to do it again, brought to you by the financial-media institutional axis - now supporting Crypto™!
- r00fus 9y ago
  And it's trusty sidekick The Blockchain (TM)
kasey_junk 9y ago
I hate Taibbi’s style. He is a descriptive writer, but after the 3rd or 4th argument you have about one of his articles you realize that it lacks the single most important thing: it’s not revealing. Two different people can read the same Taibbi article and disagree on what he meant. At the end of the day description without clarity is a bad thing.

jiggunjer 9y ago

According to wikipedia vampire squids don't feed on blood, they're bottomfeeders. The squids, that is.

cgmg 9y ago

Vampire squids don't feed on blood.

nyolfen 9y ago
well, neither does goldman