Call out the Wall Street disgusting, Greg.
I haven’t read this book yet, but I already wish Greg Smith the best. His long story short: he published his resignation letter from Goldman Sachs earlier in the year, citing their greed-driven culture. Now he has a book about his experience.
Reading the resignation letter and subsequent interviews, this guy straight-up points out the components of our economic chaos that we humans could have stopped. Greed, insecure little egos making decisions, the inefficient status quo—I read that stuff and said, right on, homie. Keep speaking. Keep speaking out.
I wish Greg Smith the best. I’m going to buy the book, I’ll post my review here.
From my time in Corp. America, I agree with him that the true clients aren’t important anymore. Especially with publicly-traded companies. Investors who don’t care are the ones who rule. First step towards economic recovery? Quit treating our business world like a gambling casino.
But enough of that. I want to focus on a sub-set of his detractors, as seen in reader responses. They treat him like this is all some type of hazing issue, and Greg Smith was the pledge who couldn’t take it.
People: the economic chaos we experienced (are experiencing) destroyed lives, took kids’ college funds and ruined retirement plans. And to take this hazing type of criticism further, yes, the people behind a lot of the economic chaos were treating all of this like a big game. That’s why it is all so vile and disgusting—and why Greg Smith needs to be commended for calling those forces out.
And this, a poster in The Denver Post:
“The guy has to stop whining or no one will hire him in the future. This is true for any profession, not just banking.”
“Whining.” I love that. This poster is wielding the trusty ol’ fear card like crazy. (There’s a book about this concept, you know.)
Here’s a thought on the economic crash: before it happened, what if more of us “whined” about the inefficient status quo, the poor decision-making and the incompetent douchebags who masturbate to pictures of themselves? You know, the key forces behind all of this?
If more of us “whined”, would the economic crash have happened?
Chris Maley 
So I didn’t get to see the “60 Minutes” interview last night, then wrote this a while ago. I just saw the interview. Most telling thing was the other man they interviewed (not Greg Smith), his quote, what he was hearing from Wall Streeters that had read more of the book: “I thought there were going to be allegations of fraud, but there weren’t.”
But that’s the idea, dude. Not “fraud”, just “vile”.
“We cheated a bunch of people who didn’t deserve to be cheated. But thank God we weren’t fraudulent.”
This is the type of thinking that crashed our economy.