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论对或错，一家公司有时候会被命运选中，扮演“资本主义不可接受的面孔”──这一词汇来自于英国前首相艾德华•希思(Edward Heath)。对很多人来说，高盛(Goldman Sachs)现在就出任了这一角色。
一年多之前的美国五大投资银行如今只剩下了高盛和摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)这两家。雷曼兄弟(Lehman)破产了，贝尔斯登(Bear Stearns)和美林(Merrill)已经卖给了商业银行。即便是存活下来，高盛付出的声誉代价一直明显高于另外一个存活者摩根士丹利。
在曼哈顿下城高盛总部大楼30层的舒适办公室，高盛首席执行长布兰克费恩(Lloyd Blankfein)坐在我对面说，他对这些非议更多的是感到困惑而不是受伤。我想他的淡定可能一定程度上是因为我们所讨论的事件──高盛与崩溃擦身而过──似乎成为了过去时。
布兰克费恩为他认为高盛的所有可取之处做了辩护：高盛合理控制着风险承担；公司收入和利润有90%来自于客户服务业务；高盛并不像一些批评人士所说的只是一家巨型对冲基金；高盛在撮合资本供需双方方面扮演着关键的社会角色；高盛合伙人经常提前退休，投身于慈善事业或是担任公职。
布兰克费恩承认，如此多的前高盛管理人士担任政府要职给人带来了一种高盛在幕后操纵政府决策（他对此予以否认）的印象。但他说，我打赌当情况安定下来的时候，人们暂时放下追求个人财富而投身政府服务的举动将再次受到肯定。
但高盛财富再度增长是否得益于政府救助计划，这个挥之不去的问题并不容易回答，不管是对布兰克费恩还是对我们。这个问题未来数周可能也会变得不再是说说而已；部分得益于恐慌情绪导致市场利差扩大，高盛准备向合伙人发放大笔令人瞠目的年终奖金。此举可能会引发针对高盛的新一轮冷嘲热讽和政治攻击。
与此同时，布兰克费恩自己的薪酬问题也再次遭受了很多媒体报导的非议──他在业绩迅猛增长的2006年获得了5300万美元薪酬。布兰克费恩身上具有一种亲和力，给人充满朝气的感觉。他出生于一个邮政工人家庭，在布鲁克林的廉租房长大，半工半读地从哈佛大学本科和哈佛大学法学院毕业。现在，他仍在艰难的环境中努力前行，只不过回报要高的多。
回想2008年9月那个疯狂的星期，雷曼兄弟破产，美国国际集团(AIG)濒临绝境，货币市场基金几近崩溃，甚至通用电气(GE)这样的企业巨头都担心无法延期他们的短期债券。布兰克费恩说，美国政府当时出手干预稳定了危机局势，现在他对此心存感激，但他并不认为其中存在明显的必然结果──这一必然联系如今变得甚至更加明显，因近期有迹象显示，美国政府为保住高盛和摩根士丹利付出了相当艰苦的努力，甚至这意味着火速撮合两家公司和摩根大通(J.P. Morgan)及花旗集团(Citigroup)等商业银行巨头进行合并。
这一结论就是：美国政府目前认为高盛规模过大以致于不能崩溃，因此提供了有效的纳税人资金作为担保，保证了高盛及其丰盛的奖金。
布兰克费恩毫不迟疑地承认，如果金融体系崩溃，那么造成的后果就会像山顶滚雪球般席卷所有人，高盛也难以逃脱。他说，否认这一点是荒谬的。作为金融体系的一份子，我们都面临着风险。我可以告诉你，当时我比你还害怕，因为我更身临其境，我了解的情况更多。如果你知道的和我一样多，那么你也会和我一样恐惧。
但他也坚称，高盛面临的风险并不特别严重。相反，高盛挺过了危机，几乎没有遭受华尔街同行那样的损失。布兰克费恩说，人们总是说高盛本来也会崩溃，但我不这么认为。高盛拥有巨额流动性，我知道我们拥有多少流动性和现金。这感觉不错，但我告诉你，这其中出现了意外因素。
布兰克费恩如今最为遗憾的是，高盛没能和政府救助措施保持更远的距离。他说，当时他没想到，自己应当远离鲍尔森那次著名的会议。在那次会议上，鲍尔森（前高盛人士）迫使美国九家最大的银行和投资银行接受政府注资。布兰克费恩强调，高盛并不需要这笔资金，而且随后就偿还了。
另外一个不寻常的举措是，美国联邦存款保险公司(FDIC)允许高盛和其他金融机构发行拥有联邦存款保险公司担保的债券，以提振他们的现金水平。布兰克费恩说，我们是高盛，是成就高于预期的人，因此我们就成为率先这么作的机构。我当时不知道这会带有负面意义。当时我以为这是件好事。现在回想起来，我很庆幸我们发行了220亿美元就收手了。我情愿完全没有发行过。
随后在危机高峰期，美联储和财政部试图撮合高盛与花旗集团或是美联银行（Wachovia）合并。布兰克费恩说，此类想法当时听起来不错。他说，如果当时搞表决的话，人们可能希望看到高盛放弃所有业务活动，与花旗合并。但这可能对花旗、对高盛、对美国都不是好事。
今天令人惊讶的是这些措施的累积意义。为了挽救金融体系，美国政府努力拯救高盛；为了拯救高盛，美国政府努力挽救金融体系。高盛＝金融体系，这就是如此多冷言冷语的最佳概括。
布兰克费恩更希望强调高盛自救措施的作用。高盛加快了如他所描述的那样漫长等待美联储审批的过程，迅速转型成为一家银行控股公司，从而摆脱了原先的主要监管部门美国证券交易委员会(SEC)。他说，在贝尔斯登和雷曼兄弟相继崩溃之后，SEC的认可已经变得没有价值了。当时看起来的情况是，美联储对其机构实施了有效的监管，该机构的验证是一个良好的认可。SEC的监管出了问题，该机构的验证也因此蒙上阴影。
两天后，他从巴菲特(Warren Buffett)那里筹集了50亿美元，随后又发行了50亿美元的高盛股票并得到了超额认购。布兰克费恩说，巴菲特拿出了实实在在的行动，他说，我赌50亿美元，高盛没问题。这马上就对客户和投资者信心产生了极大的影响。
但问题还在：要巴菲特给了市场信心，那又是什么给了巴菲特信心呢？
然后是AIG的问题，它是纠缠不休的相互指责的源头，甚至高盛在华尔街的同行之间的纠葛也源自AIG。如果在各类市场都扮演着重要角色的AIG崩溃，对经济将产生不可估量的影响。鲍尔森和美联储主席贝南克(Ben Bernanke)绝不会冒这个风险。他们在雷曼兄弟破产后改弦更张，救助了AIG这家保险巨头，如今其规模已达1,800亿美元。直到如今还有许多人指责救助AIG其实就是变相地救助高盛。
AIG为许多次级担保票据提供了担保；而高盛则是许多这类担保的大买家。虽然如此，但当政府官员打来电话询问AIG一旦破产可能对高盛有何影响时，布兰克费恩说他的回答是：微不足道。他说，他并没有要求政府救助AIG。他表示，经过了雷曼兄弟崩溃的周末后，我从未想到政府为任何一家公司提供资金。人们想知道如果AIG崩溃我们会怎么样。我告诉他们，我们没问题。
布兰克费恩强调他所谓的高盛文化中最基本的方面──其风险管理原则。华尔街将AIG视为金牌客户，而不仅仅是普通的对手方。但高盛依然采取了惯常的举措，要求AIG为其所担保资产的市值下滑拿出隔夜抵押品。
其中一些电话还是布兰克费恩亲自打的。他说，AIG态度很差，很难应付，对我们要求抵押品的电话置之不理。我给他们打电话理论，他们的理由总是不同意我们的“评分”。他们从未说过自己缺乏流动资金，没钱，我也从来没有理由怀疑他们。我从没想过去这么做。
以严格著称的高盛对于其他对手方担保资产价值的下滑都进行了再保险，这些对手方也被要求提供隔夜抵押品。布兰克费恩说，我们对他们只有一天的敞口。也就是说如果他们不还款，我可能会损失3亿美元，因为那是市场在一天之内的波动极限，不过基本上我并不担心这一点。
当然，这些预测有其理论成分。如果华尔街的公司和AIG都开始纷纷倒下，相关资产肯定会进一步崩溃。我们永远不会知道会是什么情形。结果，AIG获得了救助──虽然这一点现在意味着纳税人的钱在某种意义上被输送给高盛，以偿还AIG的担保债务。
一些人现在说，政府本应将高盛的抵押品要求弃之不顾。还有一些人说，政府甚至应当迫使高盛以折扣价结算剩余头寸。
但实际上，AIG面临的是数百家对手方；美国政府为AIG排除了破产的可能性，但除此而外，没有什么显而易见的办法能够在不冒市场恐慌风险的情况下重签数千份AIG合约，而这种风险又是美国政府试图避免的。对于高盛来说，如果其自愿放弃极具价值的合约权力来与政府搞好关系，那它与自身股东的关系也就到了破裂边缘了。
在重大事件发生之时，阴谋论总是会跳出来。对于更熟悉好莱坞电影里那套世界运行规则而非世界本身的规则那些人来说，阴谋论尤其有市场。布兰克费恩关心的是他的公司，而鲍尔森那帮人则是想阻止经济崩溃，这是毋庸置疑的。真正的问题（“大得不能倒”的问题）不是阴谋论，而是自我实现的市场观念。
如果贷款机构相信政府支持某家公司，这家公司就能以低于竞争对手的成本借贷。它能够攫取市场份额，其规模会超出监管良好的市场所能允许的范围，可能成为下一家房利美(Fannie)或房地美(Freddie)。
布兰克费恩承受着很大压力，不能承认高盛在某种程度上可能正进入这一领域。他说，如果你觉得一家公司大得不能倒，不管那意味着什么，你或许都更有可能以低利率借贷给我。至于我的动机，我所有的财富以及这辈子所积累的一切都寄托在这家公司上。这一切可能化为乌有。还有比这更糟糕的失败吗？他们不会把你送进债务人监狱，他们不会打你。
他指出，高盛合伙人的很大一部分薪酬是以股票形式获取，并被要求保留所持股权直至退休。他强调说，债权人可能因公司大得不能倒而感到安心，但运营公司的人可不是──贝尔斯登在某种意义上或许获得了救助，但其股东却倒了大霉。
话是这么说──然而没有人能够避免估算错误的发生、竞争加剧或者仅仅是运气不好。雷曼、贝尔斯登、AIG、华盛顿互惠银行(Washington Mutual)、美联银行、Countrywide、房利美和房地美的管理人员都有很大一部分身家系于公司股票。但这些公司还是出了问题。与此同时，他们的债权人却获得了救助──正是这些债权人一开始提供了贷款，帮助这些银行变得大得不能倒，而且很可能以后还会这样做。
为这个指责高盛是没用的。只有政府才能解决大得不能倒的问题，办法是创建一个可靠的清算体系，让债权人相信政府不会总是救助他们。然后贷款机构可能就会对那些会让监管者和决策者难以安枕的公司失去兴趣。
与此同时，高盛那些奖金又怎么样？布兰克费恩坦陈，如果要在消除政治怒火和让员工满意之间选择，他会选择让员工满意。他说，高盛在这个时期能有如此业绩和成就并得以存续，其最关键的除了运气，就是我们让自己处于更幸运的地位，因为我们有这些员工。我有责任保全公司和这种机制。
现在做个高盛合伙人可能不是最好的时机──不过也仍然是个不错的时候。
HOLMAN W. JENKINS JR.
(本文作者为《华尔街日报》Business World专栏作者。)
Rightly or wrongly, a business occasionally is picked out by the fates to serve as the 'unacceptable face of capitalism'─a term coined by the late British Prime Minister Edward Heath. Goldman Sachs, for a lot of people, is today's UFC.
The kinder jokes refer to the legendary investment firm as 'Government Sachs,' because of its connections to former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson (once a Goldman CEO) and other alumni who, as Washington officials, had hands in last year's financial crisis rescue operations. More rudely, a writer in Rolling Stone magazine likened Goldman to a 'great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.'
Of the five major investment banks that walked the earth little over a year ago, only two survive─Goldman and Morgan Stanley. Lehman is dead; Bear Stearns and Merrill have been absorbed by commercial banks. Even in surviving, the cost in reputation for Goldman has been unmistakably if obscurely higher than for its fellow survivor, Morgan Stanley.
Sitting across from me now in his comfortable office on the 30th floor of company headquarters in lower Manhattan, Goldman's CEO Lloyd Blankfein professes to be more bemused than hurt by the slurs. I suppose his serenity may be helped by the fact that the events we're discussing─Goldman's brush with death─appear to be firmly in the past.
He defends all that he considers exemplary about the firm: its disciplined risk taking; that 90% of its revenue and profits are generated in service to clients; that it's not just a giant hedge fund, as some critics say; that it plays a vital social role in matching those who have capital with those who need it; that its partners frequently retire young to devote themselves to philanthropy or public service.
Yes, he acknowledges, the presence of so many former Goldmanites in top echelons of government gives some the impression of a firm pulling strings (he says it doesn't). 'But,' he says, 'I bet when things have settled down, it will again be considered a positive for people to put their pursuit of personal wealth aside and go into government service.'
Yet the question hovering up near the fluorescent lights─of whether he and his colleagues owe their again-growing fortunes to a government bailout─is not an easy one, for him or us. It's also a question that may also become a tad less academic in the weeks ahead as Goldman, thanks in part to the panic that widened market spreads, prepares to dump embarrassingly large bonuses on its partners at year-end. This may or may not provoke a fresh round of undersea metaphors and political attacks on the firm.
In the meantime, the cherubic and youthful Mr. Blankfein's own payout after the bubble year of 2006─some $53 million─has already come back to haunt him in many media accounts. The son of a postal clerk, he grew up in a Brooklyn housing project and worked his way out via Harvard and Harvard Law. Today he still makes his way in a tough neighborhood, though the rewards are a lot better.
Think back to that frantic week in September 2008 when Lehman failed, AIG teetered, money-market funds verged on a meltdown, and even great corporations like GE feared no longer being able roll over their short-term debts. Mr. Blankfein says now he is thankful for the government interventions that stabilized the crisis, but he resists drawing an obvious corollary─a corollary that has become even more obvious amid recent revelations about just how strenuous were Washington's efforts to keep Goldman and Morgan Stanley alive, even if it meant shotgunning them into marriages with giant commercial banks like J.P. Morgan or Citigroup.
That corollary: For now, Washington regards Goldman as 'too big to fail,' putting an effective taxpayer guarantee under the firm, opulent bonuses and all.
Had the financial system collapsed, Mr. Blankfein unhesitatingly acknowledges, 'We would have been in that snowball tumbling down the hill with everybody else. It would be ludicrous to say otherwise. As a member of the system, we were all at risk. I will tell you I was more scared than you, because I was closer to it and I knew more. If you had known as much I did, you would have been as scared as I was.'
But he also insists that Goldman was not especially at risk. On the contrary, it came through the crisis without suffering nearly the losses of its Wall Street confrères. 'People say, 'Oh, you would have failed, blah, blah.' Well, I didn't think so. Our liquidity was huge. I knew what our liquidity and cash was. It felt OK, but let me tell you, there was getting to be 'run' elements to it.'
That said, he most evinces today regret that Goldman couldn't have kept a greater distance from government bailout efforts. It didn't occur to him at the time, he says, that he could have stayed away from Hank Paulson's famous confab, in which the Treasury secretary (and Goldman alum) forced the nation's nine biggest banks and investment banks to accept infusions of government capital. Mr. Blankfein emphasizes that Goldman didn't need the money and subsequently paid it back.
In another extraordinary measure, the FDIC enabled Goldman and other financial institutions to bulk up their cash by issuing FDIC-guaranteed debt. Says Mr. Blankfein: 'Being Goldman Sachs and overachievers that we were, we were the first ones to do it. I didn't know it would be a pejorative. At the time I thought it was a good thing. In retrospect, I'm glad we stopped at 22 [billion]. I wish we'd stopped at zero.'
Then there were the attempts by Fed and Treasury, in the heat of the crisis, to wed Goldman to Citigroup or Wachovia. Mr. Blankfein dismisses these brainstorms today as the sort of ideas that sounded good at the time. 'If people had voted, people would have liked to see Goldman Sachs drop all its activities and merge with Citigroup. That wouldn't have been good for Citi, it wouldn't have been good for Goldman, and it wouldn't have been good for the country.'
What's striking today is the cumulative significance of these exertions. In trying to save the system, the government was trying to save Goldman; in trying to save Goldman, it was trying to save the system. Goldman=system, is a good summary of so many snide mutterings.
Mr. Blankfein prefers to emphasize the role of Goldman's self-help initiatives. The firm sped up what he describes as a long-pending application before the Fed to become a bank holding company, allowing Goldman to get out from under its primary regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC's imprimatur, he says, had become worthless after the Bear Stearns and Lehman debacles. 'What it looked like at the time was, the Fed had regulated its institutions well, and its validation was a good imprimatur. And the SEC had failed in its supervision, and its validation wasn't good.'
Two days later, he raised $5 billion from Warren Buffett, followed by an oversubscribed $5 billion sale of Goldman shares in the stock market. 'Warren Buffett put his money where his mouth is and said, 'I'll bet $5 billion that Goldman Sachs is fine.'' The impact on client and investor confidence, Mr. Blankfein adds, was 'huge' and instantaneous.
But the question remains: If Mr. Buffett gave the market confidence, what gave Mr. Buffett confidence?
Then there's the matter of AIG, source of snarling recriminations even among Goldman's Wall Street brethren. If AIG, a huge player in all kinds of markets, had gone down, the impact on the economy would have been incalculable. Mr. Paulson and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke wouldn't risk it. They reversed course after Lehman and bailed out the insurance giant to a tune that now has reached $180 billion. To this day, charges fly that the AIG bailout was a backdoor bailout of Goldman.
AIG had been a big issuer of guarantees on subprime-backed paper; Goldman had been a big buyer of those guarantees. Nonetheless, when government officials rang up to ask what would be the potential impact of an AIG bankruptcy on Goldman, Mr. Blankfein says his answer was: 'negligible.' He did not, he says, ask Washington to save AIG: 'It never occurred to me, having lived through Lehman Brothers weekend, that there was government money for anything. People wanted to know how we were going to do when AIG went down. I was telling them we were fine.'
Mr. Blankfein points to what he calls a fundamental aspect of Goldman culture─its risk-management discipline. AIG had been regarded on Wall Street as a gold-plated client, not just a 'Street' counterparty. But Goldman had nonetheless taken the usual step of requiring AIG to post collateral nightly against any deterioration in the market value of the guaranteed assets.
Mr. Blankfein placed some of the phone calls himself. 'AIG was being beastly, difficult to deal with, not responding well to our calls for collateral. And I called them up and fought with them, and it was always because they were disagreeing with our 'marks.' They never said, and I never had reason to suspect, 'We're illiquid. We don't have the money.' It never occurred to me.'
Goldman, in its rigor, reinsured any shortfall with other counterparties, who were also required to post collateral nightly. 'We had one day of exposure with them. It doesn't mean I can't lose $300 million if they don't pay because that's how much a market can move in a day, but basically I'm not worried about it.'
These estimates, of course, have a theoretical element. The underlying assets would certainly have collapsed even further in value if Wall Street firms and AIG began dropping like nine-pins. We'll never know. In the event, AIG was rescued─though that now meant that taxpayer money, in a sense, was being shipped to Goldman to meet AIG's collateral obligations.
Some say today the government should have spurned Goldman's collateral demands. Some say it should even have forced Goldman to settle the outstanding positions at a discount.
Realistically, though, AIG faced hundreds of counterparties; and short of bankruptcy, which Washington had ruled out for AIG, no obvious formula presented itself for rewriting thousands of AIG contracts without risking the market panic Washington was trying to forestall. For its part, Goldman would have been on thin ice with its own shareholders if it had voluntarily relinquished valuable contract rights to make nice with Washington.
Conspiracy theories always leap to the fore amid big and consequential events. They especially appeal to people who are more familiar with Hollywood's idea of how the world works than with how the world works. There can be little doubt Mr. Blankfein was looking after his firm, while Paulson & Co. were looking to stave off an economic meltdown. The real problem here─the problem of 'too big to fail'─is not a matter of conspiracy, but of self-fulfilling market perception.
If lenders believe government stands behind a firm, that firm can borrow more cheaply than its rivals. It can grab market share and grow beyond what an otherwise disciplined market would permit, potentially becoming the next Fannie or Freddie.
Mr. Blankfein is hard pressed not to acknowledge that, in some sense, Goldman may be entering this territory. 'If you think it's too big to fail, whatever that means, then maybe you're more likely to lend to me a low rate. As far as my motivation is concerned, I have my wealth and fortune and everything I have accumulated over my lifetime at risk in this firm. And that could go to zero. Who fails beyond that? They don't put you in debtors prison. They don't beat you.'
Goldman partners, he points out, receive a sizeable chunk of their pay in stock and are required to maintain their ownership stake until retirement. Creditors might take comfort from too big to fail, but the people running the firm can't─Bear Stearns may have been 'bailed out,' in some sense, but its shareholders got killed, he notes.
All true─and yet no comfort against the possibility of miscalculation, of competitive heat or simple bad luck. Lehman, Bear, AIG, Washington Mutual, Wachovia, Countrywide, Fannie and Freddie all were run by executives with substantial wealth tied up in their stock. They blew up anyway. Meanwhile, their creditors were bailed out─creditors who supplied the leverage to let banks become too big to fail in the first place and would likely do so again.
It's no use blaming Goldman for this. Only Washington can fix too big to fail by creating a credible liquidation regime to convince creditors that government won't just bail them out. Lenders then might lose their appetite for enabling the kinds of firms that cause regulators and policy makers to lie awake at night.
In the meantime, what about those Goldman bonuses? Mr. Blankfein frankly says that if the choice is between satisfying the political furies and keeping his people happy, he will keep his people happy. 'The core of Goldman Sachs's performance, success and longevity over this period, aside from luck, is that we've put ourselves in a position to be more lucky, because of our people. And I have an obligation to keep the firm and the franchise intact.'
It may be the worst time to be a Goldman Sachs partner─but it's still a good time to be a Goldman Sachs partner.
HOLMAN W. JENKINS JR.
(Mr. Jenkins writes the Journal's Business World column. )
The kinder jokes refer to the legendary investment firm as 'Government Sachs,' because of its connections to former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson (once a Goldman CEO) and other alumni who, as Washington officials, had hands in last year's financial crisis rescue operations. More rudely, a writer in Rolling Stone magazine likened Goldman to a 'great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.'
Of the five major investment banks that walked the earth little over a year ago, only two survive─Goldman and Morgan Stanley. Lehman is dead; Bear Stearns and Merrill have been absorbed by commercial banks. Even in surviving, the cost in reputation for Goldman has been unmistakably if obscurely higher than for its fellow survivor, Morgan Stanley.
Sitting across from me now in his comfortable office on the 30th floor of company headquarters in lower Manhattan, Goldman's CEO Lloyd Blankfein professes to be more bemused than hurt by the slurs. I suppose his serenity may be helped by the fact that the events we're discussing─Goldman's brush with death─appear to be firmly in the past.
He defends all that he considers exemplary about the firm: its disciplined risk taking; that 90% of its revenue and profits are generated in service to clients; that it's not just a giant hedge fund, as some critics say; that it plays a vital social role in matching those who have capital with those who need it; that its partners frequently retire young to devote themselves to philanthropy or public service.
Yes, he acknowledges, the presence of so many former Goldmanites in top echelons of government gives some the impression of a firm pulling strings (he says it doesn't). 'But,' he says, 'I bet when things have settled down, it will again be considered a positive for people to put their pursuit of personal wealth aside and go into government service.'
Yet the question hovering up near the fluorescent lights─of whether he and his colleagues owe their again-growing fortunes to a government bailout─is not an easy one, for him or us. It's also a question that may also become a tad less academic in the weeks ahead as Goldman, thanks in part to the panic that widened market spreads, prepares to dump embarrassingly large bonuses on its partners at year-end. This may or may not provoke a fresh round of undersea metaphors and political attacks on the firm.
In the meantime, the cherubic and youthful Mr. Blankfein's own payout after the bubble year of 2006─some $53 million─has already come back to haunt him in many media accounts. The son of a postal clerk, he grew up in a Brooklyn housing project and worked his way out via Harvard and Harvard Law. Today he still makes his way in a tough neighborhood, though the rewards are a lot better.
Think back to that frantic week in September 2008 when Lehman failed, AIG teetered, money-market funds verged on a meltdown, and even great corporations like GE feared no longer being able roll over their short-term debts. Mr. Blankfein says now he is thankful for the government interventions that stabilized the crisis, but he resists drawing an obvious corollary─a corollary that has become even more obvious amid recent revelations about just how strenuous were Washington's efforts to keep Goldman and Morgan Stanley alive, even if it meant shotgunning them into marriages with giant commercial banks like J.P. Morgan or Citigroup.
That corollary: For now, Washington regards Goldman as 'too big to fail,' putting an effective taxpayer guarantee under the firm, opulent bonuses and all.
Had the financial system collapsed, Mr. Blankfein unhesitatingly acknowledges, 'We would have been in that snowball tumbling down the hill with everybody else. It would be ludicrous to say otherwise. As a member of the system, we were all at risk. I will tell you I was more scared than you, because I was closer to it and I knew more. If you had known as much I did, you would have been as scared as I was.'
But he also insists that Goldman was not especially at risk. On the contrary, it came through the crisis without suffering nearly the losses of its Wall Street confrères. 'People say, 'Oh, you would have failed, blah, blah.' Well, I didn't think so. Our liquidity was huge. I knew what our liquidity and cash was. It felt OK, but let me tell you, there was getting to be 'run' elements to it.'
That said, he most evinces today regret that Goldman couldn't have kept a greater distance from government bailout efforts. It didn't occur to him at the time, he says, that he could have stayed away from Hank Paulson's famous confab, in which the Treasury secretary (and Goldman alum) forced the nation's nine biggest banks and investment banks to accept infusions of government capital. Mr. Blankfein emphasizes that Goldman didn't need the money and subsequently paid it back.
In another extraordinary measure, the FDIC enabled Goldman and other financial institutions to bulk up their cash by issuing FDIC-guaranteed debt. Says Mr. Blankfein: 'Being Goldman Sachs and overachievers that we were, we were the first ones to do it. I didn't know it would be a pejorative. At the time I thought it was a good thing. In retrospect, I'm glad we stopped at 22 [billion]. I wish we'd stopped at zero.'
Then there were the attempts by Fed and Treasury, in the heat of the crisis, to wed Goldman to Citigroup or Wachovia. Mr. Blankfein dismisses these brainstorms today as the sort of ideas that sounded good at the time. 'If people had voted, people would have liked to see Goldman Sachs drop all its activities and merge with Citigroup. That wouldn't have been good for Citi, it wouldn't have been good for Goldman, and it wouldn't have been good for the country.'
What's striking today is the cumulative significance of these exertions. In trying to save the system, the government was trying to save Goldman; in trying to save Goldman, it was trying to save the system. Goldman=system, is a good summary of so many snide mutterings.
Mr. Blankfein prefers to emphasize the role of Goldman's self-help initiatives. The firm sped up what he describes as a long-pending application before the Fed to become a bank holding company, allowing Goldman to get out from under its primary regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC's imprimatur, he says, had become worthless after the Bear Stearns and Lehman debacles. 'What it looked like at the time was, the Fed had regulated its institutions well, and its validation was a good imprimatur. And the SEC had failed in its supervision, and its validation wasn't good.'
Two days later, he raised $5 billion from Warren Buffett, followed by an oversubscribed $5 billion sale of Goldman shares in the stock market. 'Warren Buffett put his money where his mouth is and said, 'I'll bet $5 billion that Goldman Sachs is fine.'' The impact on client and investor confidence, Mr. Blankfein adds, was 'huge' and instantaneous.
But the question remains: If Mr. Buffett gave the market confidence, what gave Mr. Buffett confidence?
Then there's the matter of AIG, source of snarling recriminations even among Goldman's Wall Street brethren. If AIG, a huge player in all kinds of markets, had gone down, the impact on the economy would have been incalculable. Mr. Paulson and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke wouldn't risk it. They reversed course after Lehman and bailed out the insurance giant to a tune that now has reached $180 billion. To this day, charges fly that the AIG bailout was a backdoor bailout of Goldman.
AIG had been a big issuer of guarantees on subprime-backed paper; Goldman had been a big buyer of those guarantees. Nonetheless, when government officials rang up to ask what would be the potential impact of an AIG bankruptcy on Goldman, Mr. Blankfein says his answer was: 'negligible.' He did not, he says, ask Washington to save AIG: 'It never occurred to me, having lived through Lehman Brothers weekend, that there was government money for anything. People wanted to know how we were going to do when AIG went down. I was telling them we were fine.'
Mr. Blankfein points to what he calls a fundamental aspect of Goldman culture─its risk-management discipline. AIG had been regarded on Wall Street as a gold-plated client, not just a 'Street' counterparty. But Goldman had nonetheless taken the usual step of requiring AIG to post collateral nightly against any deterioration in the market value of the guaranteed assets.
Mr. Blankfein placed some of the phone calls himself. 'AIG was being beastly, difficult to deal with, not responding well to our calls for collateral. And I called them up and fought with them, and it was always because they were disagreeing with our 'marks.' They never said, and I never had reason to suspect, 'We're illiquid. We don't have the money.' It never occurred to me.'
Goldman, in its rigor, reinsured any shortfall with other counterparties, who were also required to post collateral nightly. 'We had one day of exposure with them. It doesn't mean I can't lose $300 million if they don't pay because that's how much a market can move in a day, but basically I'm not worried about it.'
These estimates, of course, have a theoretical element. The underlying assets would certainly have collapsed even further in value if Wall Street firms and AIG began dropping like nine-pins. We'll never know. In the event, AIG was rescued─though that now meant that taxpayer money, in a sense, was being shipped to Goldman to meet AIG's collateral obligations.
Some say today the government should have spurned Goldman's collateral demands. Some say it should even have forced Goldman to settle the outstanding positions at a discount.
Realistically, though, AIG faced hundreds of counterparties; and short of bankruptcy, which Washington had ruled out for AIG, no obvious formula presented itself for rewriting thousands of AIG contracts without risking the market panic Washington was trying to forestall. For its part, Goldman would have been on thin ice with its own shareholders if it had voluntarily relinquished valuable contract rights to make nice with Washington.
Conspiracy theories always leap to the fore amid big and consequential events. They especially appeal to people who are more familiar with Hollywood's idea of how the world works than with how the world works. There can be little doubt Mr. Blankfein was looking after his firm, while Paulson & Co. were looking to stave off an economic meltdown. The real problem here─the problem of 'too big to fail'─is not a matter of conspiracy, but of self-fulfilling market perception.
If lenders believe government stands behind a firm, that firm can borrow more cheaply than its rivals. It can grab market share and grow beyond what an otherwise disciplined market would permit, potentially becoming the next Fannie or Freddie.
Mr. Blankfein is hard pressed not to acknowledge that, in some sense, Goldman may be entering this territory. 'If you think it's too big to fail, whatever that means, then maybe you're more likely to lend to me a low rate. As far as my motivation is concerned, I have my wealth and fortune and everything I have accumulated over my lifetime at risk in this firm. And that could go to zero. Who fails beyond that? They don't put you in debtors prison. They don't beat you.'
Goldman partners, he points out, receive a sizeable chunk of their pay in stock and are required to maintain their ownership stake until retirement. Creditors might take comfort from too big to fail, but the people running the firm can't─Bear Stearns may have been 'bailed out,' in some sense, but its shareholders got killed, he notes.
All true─and yet no comfort against the possibility of miscalculation, of competitive heat or simple bad luck. Lehman, Bear, AIG, Washington Mutual, Wachovia, Countrywide, Fannie and Freddie all were run by executives with substantial wealth tied up in their stock. They blew up anyway. Meanwhile, their creditors were bailed out─creditors who supplied the leverage to let banks become too big to fail in the first place and would likely do so again.
It's no use blaming Goldman for this. Only Washington can fix too big to fail by creating a credible liquidation regime to convince creditors that government won't just bail them out. Lenders then might lose their appetite for enabling the kinds of firms that cause regulators and policy makers to lie awake at night.
In the meantime, what about those Goldman bonuses? Mr. Blankfein frankly says that if the choice is between satisfying the political furies and keeping his people happy, he will keep his people happy. 'The core of Goldman Sachs's performance, success and longevity over this period, aside from luck, is that we've put ourselves in a position to be more lucky, because of our people. And I have an obligation to keep the firm and the franchise intact.'
It may be the worst time to be a Goldman Sachs partner─but it's still a good time to be a Goldman Sachs partner.
HOLMAN W. JENKINS JR.
(Mr. Jenkins writes the Journal's Business World column. )
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