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For some reason I think it will have been even more mundane. It is quite a long time ago, but Matt Levine wrote at the time that GS was (for whatever reason) de
by bostik 2y ago
For some reason I think it will have been even more mundane. It is quite a long time ago, but Matt Levine wrote at the time that GS was (for whatever reason) desperate to get into consumer finance. They saw the market as an open opportunity, and paired up with Apple to get a foothold reaching well beyond their Marcus brand.
[Still paraphrasing Levine.] As one would expect, that didn't go well. Goldman Sachs as a company is geared to do complex low-volume, high-margin deals. Consumer banking by its very nature is high-volume, low-margin. To make things "worse", consumer finance is also very heavily regulated to discourage routinely fleecing your customers.
Which is how you get a vampire squid squad trying to feed off of a decaffeinated strawberry juice carton. Someone is going to be disappointed, and it's not the juice carton.
GS were probably willing (initially) to pay a hefty sum to get into that market, so then the question becomes: why Apple? At the time Apple had a net float of >$200B. When you have that much cash and assets to deal with, you no longer seek the help of a bank. You are a bank.
In a funny twist, their Marcus brand is still alive at least in the UK, and they are offering some of the (supposedly)[ß] best front line savings rates to attract customers. I've never seen anyone with their brand of card, though, so clearly their offered rates are not attractive enough.
ß: few other UK high street banks are offering even better rates, but every single one of them has set a ludicrously low cap on the amount they pay good rates on before dropping to just-about-tolerable rates for whatever goes above the threshold.
- jrflowers 2y agoWhy would you decaffeinate strawberry juice
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y agoIt's a bit ambiguous but I think they may have been suggesting that the carton is decaffeinated.
- imchillyb 2y agoThe vampires receive bonuses for caffeine ingestion. And who could afford to give out bonuses in this economy?
- 1-more 2y agoMarcus still exists in the US. I use them for my savings account. They don't have anything besides that that I know of (checking, brokerage). Current APY 4.1% so as good as you can find in a savings account here.
- starttoaster 2y agoMy American Express savings account gets me an APY of 4.1%, so there's other options, but agree that it seems like either are the best rate I've found in the US.
- coolspot 2y agoApple Savings is 4.1% as well
- starttoaster 2y agoI assume Apple Savings is just provided by Goldman, right? So same savings account, different UI.
- the_sleaze_ 2y agoYes the money market is GS, which by the way that rate has been dropping by roughly 0.1% roughly every quarter
- 1-more 2y agoI have both that and Marcus and I can remember a week or two where they were different. Odd, right?
- xp84 2y agoCIBC Agility savings has always been better than Amex savings has (though I agree Amex has always been among the highest too) CIBC is currently at 4.61%! Note: I'm aware it's a Canadian bank, but this particular branch of it does business in the US and this is a normal USD account.
- 2y ago
- throwaway2037 2y ago> Goldman Sachs as a company is geared to do complex low-volume, high-margin deals. They trade billions of dollars of equities on exchange per day globally. Usually, each fill is tiny. Then do plenty of simple, high volume, low margin business. Same for spot FX, FX/equity options, all types of futures. Tiny margin, and Goldman is big in all of them. It is funny that you think Goldman is so monolithic. They have 45,000 employees, and a vast array of businesses. As a related point, JPMorgan is both a mega commercial/retail bank plus ibank. They do both types of transactions.