One of the big news stories of the day is the resignation letter published in the Times by a Goldman Sachs exec. director, which says some pretty inflammatory things about Goldman Sachs. None of these are new criticisms about the company or about the greater business practices of Wall Street, but it’s certainly notable to see the sentiments come out of someone entrenched in that world. I just wanted to quickly point out that a lot of what he says is not just rampant with Goldman Sachs or even Wall Street, but is evidence of an ominous trend happening with many of the institutional pillars of our society and economy. 

Take this quote from the op-ed:

What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.

It sounds a lot like this brief framework, covered in a post on this tumblr a few months ago:

We’re basically in an extraction economy right now, where the real money is in finding points to siphon off all of the income that people generate. Unregulated utility monopolies, rapacious health insurance companies and the medical industry generally, and of course Big Finance, are all devoted to increasing the slice of your life that they can steal from you, fair and square.