Saving Goldman Sachs

Last May, a bunch of HBS grads got together and decided to take an “MBA Oath,” promising not to do anything wrong once they were released into the world. They put a condensed version on little laminated cards to keep in their back pockets as a quick reference in case they ran into a situation that offered them the opportunity to lie, cheat, steal or short their the individual mortgages of down-on-their-luck friends in the Hamptons, and weren’t sure how to proceed. They also posed with said cards in the New York Times, looking like the members of a Christian rock band, so you knew it was serious. And yet…we still kind of thought it was just a phase, something they’d grow out of. Such is not the case! This year’s HBS grads are still feeling the need to sign a sheet of paper that says they promise to be good and not just that but they’re really kicking things up a notch with bold claims such as the following:

If Goldman Sachs’s leadership had followed the oath’s tenets, the company may not have entered into agreements to sell mortgage-backed securities that another client, New York investment company Paulson & Co., was betting against, said Khurana, the Harvard professor who worked with students in drafting the oath.

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