LIVE: Greg Smith Op-Ed Against Goldman Sachs Backlash Begins

Greg Smith Goldman NYT Op-Ed Live Updates: 

Wednesday 4:45 p.m. The Backlash Begins As left-leaning blog Think Progress reports, "people familiar with the matter" have begun weighing in on the Greg Smith Op-ed, noting, among other things, that  Smith doesn’t know what he’s talking about because he “never made more than $750,000 a year,” and that Smith was angry with the size of his bonus and his lack of promotion.

The Wall Street Journal reported that “people familiar with the matter” said that Smith is just miffed that his bonus was small: “The circumstances of Mr. Smith’s departure aren’t entirely clear. When Goldman doled out annual bonuses earlier this year, Mr. Smith’s small payment became a point of friction, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Forbes’ Nathan Vardi wrote that Smith is just “having a midlife crisis“: “Smith is not the first person who wants to tell his former bosses to shove it. He is also not a whistleblower.”

3:30 p.m. Golman Responds: The following is an email response from Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and COO Gary Cohn to Goldman Sachs employees earlier today. The email follows this morning's publication of "Why I Left Goldman Sachs." Read the full discussion here. 

Our Response to Today’s New York Times Op-Ed

By now, many of you have read the submission in today’s New York Times by a former employee of the firm. Needless to say, we were disappointed to read the assertions made by this individual that do not reflect our values, our culture and how the vast majority of people at Goldman Sachs think about the firm and the work it does on behalf of our clients.

Please direct all discussion to the Open-Mic here.

Photo Credit: Flickr.