Vampire Squid (Goldman Sachs nickname)

Matt Taibbi wrote in Rolling Stone of Jul 13, 2009: “The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.”
 
The financial firm of Goldman Sachs has been given many nicknames, including “Goldman Sucks/Goldman Sux,” “Government Sachs,” “Government Sucks,” “Goldmine Sacks/Goldmine Sachs,” “Godman Shafts/Goldman Shafts,” “Golden Sacks,”  “Golden Slacks,” “Goldie Mac” and “The United States of Goldman Sachs.”
 
The Goldman Sachs “vampire squid” reference was widely used in the financial press, but financial writer Michael Lewis disagreed: “For starters, the vampire squid doesn’t feed on human flesh. Ergo, no vampire squid would ever wrap itself around the face of humanity, except by accident. And nothing that happens at Goldman Sachs—nothing that Goldman Sachs thinks, nothing that Goldman Sachs feels, nothing that Goldman Sachs does—ever happens by accident.”
 
   
Wikipedia: Goldman Sachs
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., or simply Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), is a bank holding company that engages in investment banking, securities services and investment management. Goldman Sachs was founded in 1869, and is headquartered in the Lower Manhattan area of New York City at 85 Broad Street and has its secondary office at 30 Hudson Street, Jersey City, New Jersey. The firm has offices in some financial centers and acts as a financial advisor and money manager for corporations, governments, and wealthy families around the world. Goldman is a major dealer in securities, offers its clients mergers & acquisitions advice, underwriting services, asset management, and engages in proprietary trading, and private equity deals. It is a primary dealer in the U.S. Treasury securities market.
 
Wikipedia: Vampire Squid
The Vampire Squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis, lit. “vampire squid from hell”) is a small, deep-sea cephalopod found throughout the temperate and tropical oceans of the world. Unique retractile sensory filaments justify the Vampire Squid’s placement in its own order: Vampyromorphida (formerly Vampyromorpha), though it shares similarities with both squid and octopuses. As a phylogenetic relict it is the only known surviving member of its order, first described and mistakenly identified as an octopus in 1903 by German teuthologist Carl Chun.
 
Physical description
At a maximum 30 cm (1 ft) in total length, the Vampire Squid is no threat to humans. Its 15 cm (6 inch) gelatinous body varies in color between velvety jet-black and pale reddish, depending on location and lighting conditions. A webbing of skin connects its eight arms, each lined with rows of fleshy spines or cirri; the inside of this “cloak” is black. Only the distal half (farthest from the body) of the arms have suckers. Its limpid, globular eyes; which appear red or blue, also depending on lighting; are proportionately the largest in the animal kingdom at 2.5 cm (1 inch) in diameter.
   
Rolling Stone
The Great American Bubble Machine
From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they’re about to do it again
MATT TAIBBI
Posted Jul 13, 2009 1:49 PM
The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.
 
The Curious Capitalist - TIME.com
Goldman Sachs, vampire squid
Posted by Justin Fox
Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Thanks to the persistence and assistance of commenter audiospaceship, I finally read the samizdat version of Matt Taibbi’s Goldman Sachs screed. (Rolling Stone only posted excerpts, and while I may still go out and buy a print copy, I wouldn’t be able to link to it.) I generally liked it, and I actually learned a bunch from the section on Goldman and the oil market. The only thing that bothered me was that it’s all a bit of a bait and switch. Goldman hasn’t “engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression,” as the headline reads. At least, Taibbi offers no evidence for this. It’s just played a key—although not always the key—role in the big bubbles and crashes of the past decade.
   
Salon.com
Tuesday, July 28, 2009 06:02 PDT
Why Goldman Sachs is not a vampire squid
Michael Lewis imitates The Onion.
 
Rumor No. 5: Goldman Sachs is “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”
 
...For starters, the vampire squid doesn’t feed on human flesh. Ergo, no vampire squid would ever wrap itself around the face of humanity, except by accident. And nothing that happens at Goldman Sachs—nothing that Goldman Sachs thinks, nothing that Goldman Sachs feels, nothing that Goldman Sachs does—ever happens by accident.
 
Glad that’s cleared up.
 
DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com
Investment Banking
Goldman’s Bane Assails Firm on Lobbying Effort
September 29, 2009, 7:41 pm
It is no surprise that Goldman Sachs has been lobbying Congress hard over the past few months as Washington debates new rules to curb financial speculation. In fact, Goldman is required by law to divulge how much it spends on lobbying each quarter — information that is publicly available.

But Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone’s political reporter, who accused Goldman in a recent article of being “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,” now contends that Goldman is spreading disinformation through its lobbying effort in order to confuse government officials, a charge the investment bank denies.