Thursday, March 15, 2012

What is worse than a Muppet?

The link to the op ed below received a fair amount of  recent commentary.  It was penned by a Goldman Sachs director as  part of his resignation process.  First it is important to note that this is just the opinion of one, possibly disgruntled, person.  Hence, it may not be entirely accurate. However, he seems to feel that at times...GS puts its own interests instead of its clients.  CCI was so "shocked and dismayed" by this possible revelation, that I decided to use this post to add my own general commentary to this "news".


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

One of the quotes from the op ed that attracted the most public attention was the author's claim that "Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,”".    In full disclosure CCI is not a client of GS.  I doubt many of those reading this blog are as well.  Their clients are more likely hedge funds, asset managers, sovereign wealth funds, extremely wealthy individuals, etc.  Not usually the type of investors I think of as being easily controlled by pulling their strings, of somewhat limited intelligence, or any other characteristic of a muppet.

 It got me to thinking.... If GS might think these sophisticated investors  are "muppets"...I wonder what they the financial services industry thinks of  members of the investor class?   Probably something even more easily manipulated, gullible, dimwitted, etc.     Who knows, but this just re-enforces my belief that the individual investor might be better off thinking for themselves and/or banding together with others in the peer group to get a more independent and useful perspective on their investment strategy.

No comments:

Post a Comment