Goldman Bankers Arming Themselves

[SirNitram]

Link

“I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.

I called Goldman Sachs spokesman Lucas van Praag to ask whether it’s true that Goldman partners feel they need handguns to protect themselves from the angry proletariat. He didn’t call me back. The New York Police Department has told me that “as a preliminary matter” it believes some of the bankers I inquired about do have pistol permits. The NYPD also said it will be a while before it can name names.

While we wait, Goldman has wrapped itself in the flag of Warren Buffett, with whom it will jointly donate $500 million, part of an effort to burnish its image -- and gain new Goldman clients. Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein also reversed himself after having previously called Goldman’s greed “God’s work” and apologized earlier this month for having participated in things that were “clearly wrong.”

Has it really come to this? Imagine what emotions must be billowing through the halls of Goldman Sachs to provoke the firm into an apology. Talk that Goldman bankers might have armed themselves in self-defense would sound ludicrous, were it not so apt a metaphor for the way that the most successful people on Wall Street have become a target for public rage.

Pistol Ready

Common sense tells you a handgun is probably not even all that useful. Suppose an intruder sneaks past the doorman or jumps the security fence at night. By the time you pull the pistol out of your wife’s jewelry safe, find the ammunition, and load your weapon, Fifi the Pomeranian has already been taken hostage and the gun won’t do you any good. As for carrying a loaded pistol when you venture outside, dream on. Concealed gun permits are almost impossible for ordinary citizens to obtain in New York or nearby states.

In other words, a little humility and contrition are probably the better route.

Until a couple of weeks ago, that was obvious to everyone but Goldman, a firm famous for both prescience and arrogance. In a display of both, Blankfein began to raise his personal- security threat level early in the financial crisis. He keeps a summer home near the Hamptons, where unrestricted public access would put him at risk if the angry mobs rose up and marched to the East End of Long Island.

To the Barricades

He tried to buy a house elsewhere without attracting attention as the financial crisis unfolded in 2007, a move that was foiled by the New York Post. Then, Blankfein got permission from the local authorities to install a security gate at his house two months before Bear Stearns Cos. collapsed.

This is the kind of foresight that Goldman Sachs is justly famous for. Blankfein somehow anticipated the persecution complex his fellow bankers would soon suffer. Surely, though, this man who can afford to surround himself with a private army of security guards isn’t sleeping with the key to a gun safe under his pillow. The thought is just too bizarre to be true.

So maybe other senior people at Goldman Sachs have gone out and bought guns, and they know something. But what?

Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary during the bailout and a former Goldman Sachs CEO, let it slip during testimony to Congress last summer when he explained why it was so critical to bail out Goldman Sachs, and -- oh yes -- the other banks. People “were unhappy with the big discrepancies in wealth, but they at least believed in the system and in some form of market-driven capitalism. But if we had a complete meltdown, it could lead to people questioning the basis of the system.”

Torn Curtain

There you have it. The bailout was meant to keep the curtain drawn on the way the rich make money, not from the free market, but from the lack of one. Goldman Sachs blew its cover when the firm’s revenue from trading reached a record $27 billion in the first nine months of this year, and a public that was writhing in financial agony caught on that the profits earned on taxpayer capital were going to pay employee bonuses.

This slip-up let the other bailed-out banks happily hand off public blame to Goldman, which is unpopular among its peers because it always seems to win at everyone’s expense.

Plenty of Wall Streeters worry about the big discrepancies in wealth, and think the rise of a financial industry-led plutocracy is unjust. That doesn’t mean any of them plan to move into a double-wide mobile home as a show of solidarity with the little people, though.

Cool Hand Lloyd

No, talk of Goldman and guns plays right into the way Wall- Streeters like to think of themselves. Even those who were bailed out believe they are tough, macho Clint Eastwoods of the financial frontier, protecting the fistful of dollars in one hand with the Glock in the other. The last thing they want is to be so reasonably paid that the peasants have no interest in lynching them.

And if the proles really do appear brandishing pitchforks at the doors of Park Avenue and the gates of Round Hill Road, you can be sure that the Goldman guys and their families will be holed up in their safe rooms with their firearms. If nothing else, that pistol permit might go part way toward explaining why they won’t be standing outside with the rest of the crowd, broke and humiliated, saying, “Damn, I was on the wrong side of a trade with Goldman again.”

[Uraniun235]

Damn! I just came here to post that.


As someone on another forum pointed out, "it's a shame those fears aren't grounded."


Also I thought gun permits were exceedingly difficult to get in New York, but I imagine having your own lawyer and a boatload of cash helps a lot with that.

[Coyote]

This is tragically funny on so many levels. These guys are buying permits and pistols, but seriously, how much are these pampered candy-asses actually going to go to a range and practice with their new toys? Maybe after the first week or so, once the novelty wears off, it'll get tucked away and the guy will coast forever on "magic talisman syndrome"-- where he thinks that merely the act of having a gun is, *poof*, a magic talisman that will ward off eeeeevil stinky criminals.... which, in their perspective, seems to be "ordinary people that we have ruined".

This is also funny:

Common sense tells you a handgun is probably not even all that useful. Suppose an intruder sneaks past the doorman or jumps the security fence at night. By the time you pull the pistol out of your wife’s jewelry safe, find the ammunition, and load your weapon, Fifi the Pomeranian has already been taken hostage and the gun won’t do you any good.

Ordinarily, I'd argue thgat a handgun is actually one of the most handy tools for self-defense, but I also follow that up with "with proper preparation and training", so in light of my previous paragraph, yeah, the article is correct. Especially if they are of the opinion that an effin' pistol will hold off a mob of angry people.

As for carrying a loaded pistol when you venture outside, dream on. Concealed gun permits are almost impossible for ordinary citizens to obtain in New York or nearby states.

Here the article is dead wrong. It is hard for ordinary people --you know, the scummy filthy proles that are the victims of these pompous fuckbags-- to get pistol permits. These perfumed, talcum-powdered power hogs just have to wave a fist-size loaf of Benjamins and their pistol permits will be rubber-stamped. Because it just wouldn't do for these capitalist rapists to actually face their victims on even terms in a dark alley someday.

Hey, anyone wanna know how I really feel?

[General Zod]

The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.

I'm guessing there's no direct quote on this? Because as easy as this makes it to make fun of these clowns something about this line strikes me as either being extremely exaggerated or totally made up. I mean populist uprising? Seriously?

[FSTargetDrone]

Seems said bankers would be better off holed up in their offices with armed guards on the roof to fend off the torch- and pitchfork-wielding horde of angry investors and customers, something reminiscent of this:

In July 1863, during the draft riots in New York City, three Gatling guns were set up at the offices of the New York Times, whose editor, Henry Jarvis Raymond, was an outspoken opponent of the rioters' anti-draft sentiments. The mob approached the Times but backed off when it saw the guns...

I agree with Zod. I think the idea of an "uprising" is laughable.

[Coyote]

It depends. If the liberals are staging an uprising, then yes, the power pigs have reason to be fearful. However, let's face it, it's more likely that conservatives will rise up since they feel marginalized right now. If it's a conservative uprising, they'd target government, not business. Because business, as we all know, is the friend of the worker .

[General Zod]

It depends. If the liberals are staging an uprising, then yes, the power pigs have reason to be fearful. However, let's face it, it's more likely that conservatives will rise up since they feel marginalized right now. If it's a conservative uprising, they'd target government, not business. Because business, as we all know, is the friend of the worker .

It's more the fact that anyone could use the term "populist uprising" with a straight face. Personally I'd like to see a direct quote than an unsourced, unnamed attribution.

[Edward Yee]

I agree with Coyote if it turns out that the training mentality is magic talisman syndrome. As with special forces, it's the person and his or her mindset before the technology. Hell, one recent story on gun blogs was about one of their own who'd fended off a mugger -- not with the latest fancy-dandy AR* or big-bore "macho" .45... but with hot coffee (albeit followed by a drawn .25-caliber pocket pistol).

* Can you tell how much I dislike the "M4gery" trend yet?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Yep. Throwing whatever you have in your hand at the time in the face of the person approaching is a damned good way to buy enough time to draw your gun if you're carrying concealed.