The True Believer

Embattled Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has been in the media spotlight since he and his associates were sliced and diced on national television during an eleven hour Senate hearing. Blankfein went up to bat last; his underlings took a day long battering before he appeared alone at the end of the day. The Senators peppered him with the same stuff they had used all day and he fed back the same responses. No big surprise. Given the legal challenges Goldman faces, the company can’t be too careful about what they say.

The hand of Mark Fabiani, the so-called Public Relations “Master of Disaster,” can also be seen in the performances displayed by the Goldman cast of characters, especially that of Blankfein. Flash forward over the ensuing weeks and Fabiani really got Goldman’s top-gun in the grove. A humble, forthcoming Lloyd Blankfein conveyed a “Reasonable response for every question image” in the broadcast and print interviews Fabiani set up for him. And there have been plenty.

Blankfein was so omnipresent as to remind one of Dick Orkin’s 1960s radio superhero, Chickenman, “He’s everywhere! He’s everywhere!” From Charlie Rose to Fareed Zakaria, a soft spoken Blankfein has been everywhere with a well rehearsed explanation for every challenge. Frequently his response only obliquely relates to the question. An often increasingly frustrated host is left facing a mild mannered Blankfein in the role of the patient mentor explaining a complex world to a less than gifted underling.

While Fabiani offered him up to all the mainline interview and news broadcasts, the “Master of Disaster” kept him away from satirist Jon Stewart, who had skewered Blankfein and Goldman Sachs repeatedly. While Blankfein seems able to finesse questions from the real news guys, Stewart would make mincemeat of him. The Goldman team was probably afraid Stewart might ask about Goldman’s incestuous relationship with AIG that siphoned a ton of the taxpayer’s money into Goldman’s coffers. If Stewart was out of bounds, fellow Comedy Central star, Stephen Colbert was off the wall in his depiction of Blankfein.

The worst part of all this is that as I reviewed the history and the videos of Blankfein’s ongoing display of gamesmanship, the more I came to understand that the Goldman Sachs CEO believes every word that comes out of his mouth. I didn’t fully understand this until I saw an interview Blankfein gave to Bloomberg television. Under repeated questions about conflict of interest issues, the Goldman executive brought the issue around to the company’s success. In his eyes there can be no conflict if your customers keep giving you their money.

This convoluted view boils down to, “Anything we can get away with is OK!” How can Blankfein possibly believe this? It’s called “Cognitive Dissonance.” A wonderful human trait that leads us to increasingly believe that the path we have chosen is the right path. It frees us of unnecessary doubt. In modest doses it is a life saver. When taken to the extreme that Lloyd Blankfein displays, it is a disaster. Understand, the Goldman Sachs CEO is not alone; thousands of Wall Street types believe they are perfectly free to play games with our economy. And to be paid outrageous sums for gambling with the pensions and savings of hard working people. All the more reason that Mr. Blankfein’s mild mea culpas are not enough and Goldman’s plan to establish an in-house “Business Standards Committee” is laughable. The Master of Disaster probably came up with this scheme to stave off adult supervision. By now we know better. All of this obstructivity can be described with the four letter word that Goldman Sachs sales people used to describe the toxic packages they were peddling, S**t. Some of us might even preface it with “Bull.”