Earlier this week, Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote that after speaking with executives at Goldman Sachs and officials in Washington, and “poring through” the Levin Report, he’d come to the conclusion that “Lloyd Blankfein wasn’t lying” when he testified last year that Goldman “didn’t have a massive short against the housing market.” Matt Taibbi read the column and he did not like it. In fact, it made him so angry-stinkin mad, in fact- that he was forced to lift his ARS fast (“I’ve been trying not to say anything bad about Andrew Ross Sorkin,” he said last night). As Taibbi scholars, please guess at this time what the defense of Goldman made MT want to do:
a) Throw scalding hot coffee in Sorkin’s face
b) Bake some of the horse semen he’d been storing in his fridge into a pie and smash it into Sorkin’s face
c) Run through the Times newsroom smashing sno-globes and flipping desks over
d) all of the above
e) none of the above
f) other
In this case the answer we were looking for was C.
The Sorkin piece reads like it was written by the bank’s marketing department, which may not be an accident. In November of last year, the New York Times announced that “Dealbook” was entering into a sponsorship agreement with a variety of companies, including …Goldman, Sachs…Even last year I thought it was a terrible decision by the Times to take money from Goldman in the wake of an unprecedented period of financial corruption – especially to sponsor, of all things, business reporting.
But now? This looks like a joke. In Russia in the Yeltsin years, reporters had a term for selling editorial print content to mobsters. They called it “selling jeans,” a play on the old Soviet-era black-marketeer practice of trading rabbit hats to tourists for their Levi’s. This Sorkin piece has the unmistakable look of a brand-new set of 501s to me. Pieces like this undermine the great work that reporters like Gretchen Morgenson have done in the paper in recent years.
At the very least, Dealbook, if it was determined to take startup money from Goldman, should have stayed agnostic about the great scandals swarming round the company for a good long while. I had heard several times over the winter that some Times reporters were upset about that Dealbook sponsorship deal with Goldman, and now I can see why. If I worked at the paper and saw this Sorkin piece, I would be running through the newsroom smashing sno-globes and turning desks over.
The horse jizz will have to wait for another column.
Andrew Ross Sorkin Gives Goldman A Rub Down [Rolling Stone]
Pulllease. He is just a 2 bit reporter trying to milk is bombastic statements about GS and hating because he can’t get a book deal like Too Big to Fail. ARS doesn’t come down to where he works and slap the dick out his mouth.
trying to choose between taking a side with taibbi or ARS is like choosing between herpes and syphillis.
g) douse himself with kerosene and jump into a blast furnace
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/roundtable-the-gop-victory-the-tea-party-ascendancy-and-obamas-next-steps-20101110?page=6
Note: Previous ban on ‘In Soviet Russia’ jokes is still in effect
I think he is wonderful. I also love wearing bandannas, myself so there is that.
Taibbi has a book deal, and I imagine MT’s agent is no sucker is not in the habit of leaving money on the table for his client. But how could we know that Sorkin’s agent has cut a better deal? And for a “2 bit reporter” to reduce Goldman’s valuation by $8 bil, not bad. (http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-stock-falls-83-billion-after-taibbi-article-2011-5)
Like it, except the above are examples of stuff he’s seriously done.
Wait?!?! Rolling Stone is still a magazine???
MT>ARS
True, but the question was what did the ARS column make him want to do.
The associative corollary is
Fiction > Non-fiction
Seriously the MT “vampire squid” piece reads like someone that doesn’t understand how things really work, so he filled in the blanks to make the real-world more interesting. Some of the things in his article are just plain made up.
I just was thinking, MT could probably succeed in getting a seat in the senate, and on the financial services committee, they both have about the same comprehension skills.
Go back to your desk and screw a client…
Third World America 2011: Forget “Fast Tracking to Anarchy” We’ve Arrived
U.S. Downward Mobility
The
destruction of the middle class has accelerated. Housing values have
plummeted, and investors earn negative real rates of inflation adjusted
returns on “safe” investments like money market funds. Food, fuel, and
medical costs have skyrocketed. Essential civil services are underfunded
while taxes escalate. The middle class is sinking fast as saved wealth
is destroyed and its standard of living erodes.
After being
subjected to a national financial crime wave with no meaningful
consequences for white collar criminals, the middle class, the core of
many cities and communities, is being subjected to a physical crime
wave.
The U.S. escalated its debt to fund the ongoing bailout of
the banking system. TARP was a small part of it. The Fed now owns over a
trillion in suspect assets it bought from banks, and it daily provides
them with almost zero cost money so high spreads help them earn their
way out of the financial hole in their balance sheets. No one went to
jail, and bankers reward themselves with billions in bonuses.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-tavakoli/third-world-america-2011_b_873200.html
Taibbi is obviously a clown, but what of the GS sponsorship of Dealbook? You’d think being Carlos Slim’s bitch would be enough for the Times.
In Soviet Russia, you pay for advertisement.
The 40 year old balding guy sporting the do-rag is like putting a leather car bra on your 1995 Geo Metro
Any relation Bess?
Jackass, the comma belongs after “myself”, not bandanas. Seriously, its like Grammar 101.
‘Not bad?’ Guy’s a 3rd rate Hedda Hopper. And if you think he had anything to do with the market’s valuation of GS, you should go back to working for the Hi-Grade Leveraged Credit Fund.
I mean, yeah it’s bad but how is it news that Sorkin is a whore for every bank on Wall Street? It’s not.
No,
I had to both ‘Like’ your comment and write a comment stating how much I liked it.
-Guy who’s easily excited.
hardly news, but still worth fixating on how blatant it is
With a seat on the senate finance committee, Matt could ask the really cutting and honest questions that prove that no financially-engineered wool can be pulled over HIS eyes. Questions that show how much he knows about all of this stuff – now Baucus won’t have to be the only one asking at H. Hawk. “Chairman Bernanke, tell me about your work at the Treasury.”
He looks like a minor member of the cast of “Fame” in that photo.
Matt, is that you?
If any of these guys had a CFA none of this would happen.
I was going to tell you to kill yourself even before I saw the huffingtonpost link.
Go kill yourself.
Where can I get one of those bras?
- UBS MD who’s planning to spend his bonus all in one place
When he says “the great work that reporters like Gretchen Morgenson have done”, what he means is “she has no idea what she’s talking about but I agree with her agenda”.
So do-rags are out, and models and bottles are in again? I can’t keep up.
-guy that thinks Members Only jackets will come back in style someday
Are there a lot of sno-globes sitting around the newsroom waiting to be smashed? What percentage of NYT desk jockeys has a sno-globe on his/her desk anyway?
I am so sorry about your cancer, it’s not common for men to wear a wig, but we have found that it is a much better choice than having the possibility of being confused with a douchebag by wearing a headscarf.
I think he’s going to go there and call him, “Arse!”
Wouldn’t want to be there to hear it. It could get very ugly.
furiously masturbating?
into a cup?
Taibbi can talk the truth about TBTF because he’s an outsider. He’s Italian.
Sorkin potects Goldman, cleanses the image of TBTF through his movies, because he is a member of the tribe.
One member covering for malfeasance of the others. Completely transparent.
Hey!
-M. Taibbi
PS: but seriously- yeah.
go sell crazy somewhere else. we’re all stocked up here.
Mr. Richascroesus, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
its? yeah. take a lap.
Bess, I imagined you reading this article to me just to hear you say the words.
~FM
Motives aside, is the Sorkin piece accurate Mr. Taibbi?
And also …”myself,”
Comma inside the quotes.
But nice work on the direct-address comma.
Please tell me one thing that MT wrote which is fiction?
That Goldman shorted their clients. The desk is a separate company. MMs, by definition, are net short the first time they sell something.
Disappointed in the lack of “Horse Semen” tag
I can only assume those criticizing Taibbi all make so much money that day to day survival is not a concern so is your perspective then that the “markets did their job, capitalism works, we create jobs” etc., etc.? nnIf so, how then do you account for the tangible results of the short selling, insider trading, pump & dump and all the other “legal” activity (“how things really work’) that Goldman, Chase, UBS etc indulge in? That is to say is 12 % unemployment, the housing collapse, the debt “crisis” and an extra 10 trillion in debt all Obama’s fault?nnMore specifically, what has been fabricated in Taibbi’s reporting on Goldman?
Semantics, no? Cui bono.