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Saturday, July 27, 2013

John Crudele: The secret to Goldman’s good fortune



September 30, 2009 by · Leave a Comment 

By John Crudele, New York Post

So, is this how Goldman Sachs does it?

“It,” of course, is making gobs of money even when nobody else on Wall Street can.

And those profits then go into outrageous bonuses to employees, which cause rancor on Capitol Hill and on Main Street.

You’ve heard the old saying, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.”

Goldman Sachs knows lots of important people. That fact is indisputable, mainly because former Goldman employees are scattered around the country, and the globe, in important, decision-making financial positions.

But I’d like to make an addendum to that old saying, which I’ll explore for you today: Who you know is only important if you can get them on the phone anytime you want.

Today’s column is about Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008.

It’s also about the unparalleled access that Goldman Sachs had to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, whose mission — according to his own words — was to bring Wall Street and market regulators (not to mention decision makers) together, so that they were “seeing the same issues, the same problems and working toward the same solutions.” On Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2008 — the day before the one I am writing about — the stock market performed horribly.

By the end of the session the Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 449 points as investors worried about the nation’s financial system. The next morning, Sept. 18, Paulson placed his first call of the day at 6:55 a.m., to Lloyd Blankfein, who succeeded Paulson as CEO of Goldman. It’s unclear whether the two connected because Blankfein called Paulson minutes later.

And then Blankfein placed another call to Paulson at 7:05 a.m. for what looks like a 10-minute conversation.

After that Paulson called Christopher Cox, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman twice; British Chancellor Alistair Darling and New York Federal Reserve head (and now Treasury Secretary) Tim Geithner two times.

Then Paulson took another call from Goldman’s Blankfein.

It wasn’t even 9 a.m. yet — 30 minutes before the stock market was to open — and Paulson and Blankfein had already exchanged three phone calls.

This wasn’t particularly unusual.

On Wednesday, Sept. 17, the day the stock market was in trouble, Paulson spoke with Blankfein five times, including a pair of calls at 7:20 p.m. and 8:45 p.m. One of the earlier calls — at 12:15 p.m. — is listed on Paulson’s log in the same five minute interval as a call to Geithner, which could indicate that this was a conference call.

If Paulson did set up a conference call, it would have been an extreme instance of putting someone who wielded a lot of power — Geithner — together with someone — Blankfein — who could profit from that connection.

And all of this doesn’t include possible cell phone calls. The Treasury turned over to me Paulson’s official schedule and phone records after I made a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

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