And So It Goes….

From the June 14, 1910 edition of the New York Times:

Wall Street’s Childish View
Incidentally the proposal of this plan has called forth from some men well known in Wall Street their views of the estimates which Wall Street, as a whole, customarily forms regarding public opinion. “The majority of Wall Street men,” said the head of one large institution yesterday, “are infantile in their estimates of public opinion and of the means by which it can be swayed. I have been struck by this fact ever since I have myself been in Wall Street. In the eyes of many all that is necessary to change public opinion on any matter is to draw up a set of resolutions signed by a sufficiently large number of men whose names are well known in the world of finance. It not infrequently happens, it seems to me, that the very moves by which Wall Street expects to change public sentiment around to the Wall Street way of looking at things have directly the opposite effect.”

In closely related news, Barry Ritholtz notes:

Over the weekend, we noted that, according to a recent poll, Goldman Sach’s reputation is worse than even BP’s. Following that, I caught the tail end of a radio interview over the weekend, where some wire house senior executive (didn’t get the name) was complaining about the negative coverage his firm received in the press.
Really? You think the corporate-owned wimpy US press has been too hard on you? Just because you nearly brought down the entire global economy through your recklessness, then took trillions in taxpayer money as a reward for your irresponsibility, then — instantly — returned to business as usual. Somehow, you think everyone should be going easy on you?

Posted by on June 14th, 2010 at 9:30 am


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