First published 2012
Greg Smith arrives at Goldman Sachs in summer 2000 as an idealistic 21-year-old intern. He learns the firm's first business principle: clients' interests always come first. This becomes his guiding belief as he climbs from intern to analyst to sales trader, eventually managing over a trillion dollars in client assets. Smith witnesses the firm's transformation from a respected institution that took Ford, Sears, and Microsoft public into what critics called a "vampire squid." He watches colleagues refer to clients as "muppets" while the company pays a record half-billion dollar SEC settlement. After twelve months of unsuccessful conversations with nine Goldman partners about these problems, Smith decides only public exposure can force change. He walks away from his lucrative career and writes a viral New York Times op-ed that reaches over three million readers. The piece draws responses from Paul Volcker, Jack Welch, and Mike Bloomberg while striking a nerve with a public already questioning Wall Street's role in the economic crisis.
Genres: business, economics, non-fiction, 21st-century, finance
Vibes: emotional, fast-paced, thought-provoking
Tropes: insider-account, whistleblower
Setting: New York, Wall Street
Period: 2000s, 2010s
277 pages · Hardcover · Grand Central Publishing