From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

The bestselling author of the acclaimed House of Cards and The Last Tycoons turns his spotlight on to Goldman Sachs and the controversy behind its success. From the outside, Goldman Sachs is a perfect company. The Goldman PR machine loudly declares it to be smarter, more ethical, and more profitable than all of its competitors. Behind closed doors, however, the firm constantly straddles the line between conflict of interest and legitimate deal making, wields significant influence over all levels of government, and upholds a culture of power struggles and toxic paranoia. And its clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007—unknown to its clients—may have made the financial ruin of the Great Recession worse. Money and Power reveals the internal schemes that have guided the bank from its founding through its remarkable windfall during the 2008 financial crisis. Through extensive research and interviews with the inside players, including current CEO Lloyd Blankfein, William Cohan constructs a nuanced, timely portrait of Goldman Sachs, the company that was too big—and too ruthless—to fail.

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of THE LAST TYCOONS and HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, feared, and controversial investment bank in the world For much of its storied 142-year history, Goldman Sachs has projected an image of being better than its competitors--smarter, more collegial, more ethical, and far more profitable. The firm--buttressed by the most aggressive and sophisticated p.r. machine in the financial industry--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture where partners stifle their egos for the greater good, and honoring the "14 Principles," the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman--a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a company composed of "cyborgs" who are kept in line by an internal "reputational risk department" staffed by former CIA operatives and private investigators; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007--a bet not revealed to its clients--may have made the financial ruin of the Great Recession worse. As William D. Cohan shows in his riveting chronicle of Goldman's rise to the summit of world capitalism, the firm has shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and its enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents, court cases, SEC filings, Freedom of Information Act papers and other sources, and conducting over 100 interviews, including interviews with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (including the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. Part of the answer is the firm's assiduous cultivation of people in power--dating back to 1913, when Henry Goldman advised the government on how the new Federal Reserve, designed to oversee Wall Street, should be constituted. Sidney Weinberg, who ran the firm for four decades, advised presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy and was nicknamed "The Politician" for his behind-the-scenes friendships with government officials. Goldman executives ran fundraising efforts for Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush. The firm showered lucrative consulting or speaking fees on figures like Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Summers. Famously, and fatefully, two Goldman leaders-- Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson--became Secretaries of the Treasury, where their actions both before and during the financial crisis of 2008 became the stuff of controversy and conspiracy theories. Another major strand in the firm's DNA is its eagerness to deal on both sides of a transaction, eliding questions of conflict of interest by the mere assertion of their innate honesty and nobility, a refrain repeated many times in its history, most notoriously by current Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's jesting assertion that he was doing "God's work." As Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review of HOUSE OF CARDS said, "Cohan writes with an insider's knowledge of the workings of Wall Street, a reporter's investigative instincts and a natural storyteller's narrative command." In MONEY & POWER, Cohan has marshaled all these gifts in a powerful and definitive account of an institution whose public claims of virtue look very much like ruthlessness when exposed to the light of day.

x, 658 pages ; 24 cm A revelatory history of Goldman Sachs Includes bibliographical references (pages 615-630) and index The Pyrrhic victory -- A family business -- The apostle of prosperity -- The politician -- The value of friendship -- "What is inside information?" -- The biggest man on the block -- Caveat emptor -- The Goldman way -- A formula that works -- Goldman sake -- Busted -- Money -- Power -- The college of cardinals -- $10 billion or bust -- The glorious revolution -- It's too much fun being CEO of Goldman Sachs -- Alchemy -- Getting closer to home -- The fabulous fab -- Selling to widows and orphans -- Meltdown -- Goldman gets paid -- God's work

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

Review""_Destined to be a runaway bestseller...There's no shortage of Goldman clients, rivals, and former employees willing to explain how greed and recklessness led Goldman to become too big, too powerful, and even too conflicted to fail_. As one Goldman alum puts it, 'I saw what they did to their customers...They'd steal from them, rape them, anything they could do.' It worked like a charm...[Cohan] has produced the frankest, most detailed, most human assessment of the bank to date. Cohan portrays a firm that has grown so large and hungry that it's no longer long-term greedy but short-term vicious. And that's the wonder -- and horror -- of Goldman Sachs." -- _Businessweek "_[Money and Power_] offers the best analysis yet of Goldman's increasingly tangled web of conflicts_...The writing is crisp and the research meticulous, drawing on reams of documents made publicly available by congressional committees and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission."-- The Economist "[E]xhaustive, revelatory account of the rise and rise of Goldman Sachs....engrossing....penetrating....Cohan revels in a good bust-up and lingers over anecdotes involving intrigue....All the senior partners still living spoke to him, often very candidly, and only a few from the next ranks seem to have refuse....a vast trove of material"--_The Financial Times_"A former Lazard Freres & Co. banker and newspaper reporter, Cohan brings the bank's sometimes 'schizophrenic' behavior to vivid life...Drawing on more than 100 interviews with clients, competitors and Goldman leaders including Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein, Cohan evinces an eye for telling images and an ear for deadpan quotations."-- Bloomberg "In MONEY & POWER, journalist and former investment banker William D. Cohan launches a quixotic quest to show that Mr. Blankfein and his peers are money-sucking evil-doers that came to their riches mostly by nefarious means...(_full disclosure: I was once a Goldman Sachs employee myself)._...Mr. Cohan's complaints against Goldman seem to be that it is 'ruthless' in pursuit of profit; doesn't do enough to protect its instutitional clients from making bad decisions; works too closely with government; too often advises clients on both sides of a deal; and skirts close to the line of 'insider trading'."-- Mary Kissel, _The Wall Street Journal_ Praise for HOUSE OF CARDS "Like Michael Lewis’s ‘Liar’s Poker’ and Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s ‘Barbarians at the Gate,’ this volume turns complex Wall Street maneuverings into high drama that is gripping .... [His] account of its death spiral not only makes for riveting, edge-of-the-seat reading, but it also stands as a chilling cautionary tale about how greed and hubris and high-risk gambling wrecked one company."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Fascinating.”--_The Wall Street Journal_"A riveting blow-by-blow account." --_The Economist_ "Masterfully reported....[Cohan] has turned into one of our most able financial journalists....he deploys not only his hands-on experience of this exotic corner of the financial industry but also a remarkable gift for plain-spoken explanation... It's impossible to do justice to his reportorial detail in a brief review..." --_Los Angeles Times_ Praise for THE LAST TYCOONS “Cohan’s portrayal of the firm's dominant partners—whose gargantuan appetites and mercurial habits provide the unifying force behind the book’s operatic melodramas— makes this an epic . . . In fact,_ The Last Tycoons_ bears a striking resemblance to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s_ The Last Tycoon_.”_—New York Times Book Review_“Breezy and highly readable . . . For those of us who enjoy high-level gossip (most people) and an inside look at the machinations, triumphs, failures, and foibles of some of Wall Street’s and America’s most exalted personages, Cohan’s book is entertaining and seductively engrossing.”—_Chicago Tribune_ “Cohan not only knows where the bodies are buried but got a guided tour of the graveyard.”_—Financial Times_“Rips the roof off of one of Wall Street’s most storied investment banks.”_—Vanity Fair_Product DescriptionFrom the bestselling, prize-winning author of THE LAST TYCOONS and HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, feared, and controversial investment bank in the world For much of its storied 142-year history, Goldman Sachs has projected an image of being better than its competitors--smarter, more collegial, more ethical, and far more profitable. The firm--buttressed by the most aggressive and sophisticated p.r. machine in the financial industry--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture where partners stifle their egos for the greater good, and honoring the "14 Principles," the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman--a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a company composed of "cyborgs" who are kept in line by an internal "reputational risk department" staffed by former CIA operatives and private investigators; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007--a bet not revealed to its clients--may have made the financial ruin of the Great Recession worse. As William D. Cohan shows in his riveting chronicle of Goldman's rise to the summit of world capitalism, the firm has shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and its enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents, court cases, SEC filings, Freedom of Information Act papers and other sources, and conducting over 100 interviews, including interviews with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (including the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. Part of the answer is the firm's assiduous cultivation of people in power--dating back to 1913, when Henry Goldman advised the government on how the new Federal Reserve, designed to oversee Wall Street, should be constituted. Sidney Weinberg, who ran the firm for four decades, advised presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy and was nicknamed "The Politician" for his behind-the-scenes friendships with government officials. Goldman executives ran fundraising efforts for Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush. The firm showered lucrative consulting or speaking fees on figures like Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Summers. Famously, and fatefully, two Goldman leaders-- Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson--became Secretaries of the Treasury, where their actions both before and during the financial crisis of 2008 became the stuff of controversy and conspiracy theories. Another major strand in the firm's DNA is its eagerness to deal on both sides of a transaction, eliding questions of conflict of interest by the mere assertion of their innate honesty and nobility, a refrain repeated many times in its history, most notoriously by current Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's jesting assertion that he was doing "God's work." As Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review of HOUSE OF CARDS said, "Cohan writes with an insider's knowledge of the workings of Wall Street, a reporter's investigative instincts and a natural storyteller's narrative command." In MONEY & POWER, Cohan has marshaled all these gifts in a powerful and definitive account of an institution whose public claims of virtue look very much like ruthlessness when exposed to the light of day.

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of THE LAST TYCOONS and HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, feared, and controversial investment bankin the world For much of its storied 142-year history, Goldman Sachs has projected an image of being better than its competitors--smarter, more collegial, more ethical, and far more profitable. The firm--buttressed by the most aggressive and sophisticated p.r. machine in the financial industry--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture where partners stifle their egos for the greater good, and honoring the "14 Principles," the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman--a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a company composed of "cyborgs" who are kept in line by an internal "reputational risk department" staffed by former CIA operatives and private investigators; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007--a bet not revealed to its clients--may have made the financial ruin of the Great Recessionworse. As William D. Cohan shows in his riveting chronicle of Goldman's rise to the summit of world capitalism, the firm has shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and its enormous profits intact.Byreading thousands of pages of government documents, court cases, SEC filings, Freedom of Information Actpapersand other sources, and conducting over 100 interviews, including interviews with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (including thesixliving men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. Part of the answer is the firm's assiduous cultivation of people in power--dating back to 1913, when Henry Goldman advised the government on how the new Federal Reserve, designed to oversee Wall Street, should be constituted.Sidney Weinberg, who ran the firm for four decades, advised presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy and was nicknamed "The Politician" for his behind-the-scenes friendships with government officials. Goldman executives ran fundraising efforts for Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush. The firm showered lucrative consultingor speaking fees on figures like Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Summers. Famously, and fatefully, two Goldman leaders-- Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson--became Secretaries of the Treasury, where theiractions both before andduring the financial crisis of 2008became the stuff of controversy and conspiracy theories. Another major strand in the firm's DNA is its eagerness to deal on both sides of a transaction, eliding questions of conflict of interest by the mere assertion of their innate honesty and nobility, a refrain repeated many times in its history, most notoriously by current Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's jesting assertion that he was doing "God's work." As Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review of HOUSE OF CARDS said, "Cohan writes with an insider's knowledge of the workings of Wall Street, a reporter's investigative instincts and a natural storyteller's narrative command." In MONEY & POWER, Cohan has marshaled all these gifts in a powerful and definitive account of an institution whose public claims of virtue look very much like ruthlessness when exposed to the light of day.

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

When, in late 2008, the dust finally started to settle on one of the worst financial crises in history, only one Wall Street institution still stood virtually unassailed - Goldman Sachs. Why did Goldman survive, and even flourish, when so many of its peers were collapsing around them? Were the Goldman professionals simply the 'smartest guys in the room', the elite of the elite? Or was there more at work than simply the magic of 'The Goldman Way'? In Money and Power William D Cohan peers behind the curtain to give us the inside story of why Goldman is so profitable, and so powerful. His behind-the-scenes account shows how, buttressed by the most aggressive and sophisticated PR machine in the financial industry, Goldman Sachs has continually projected an image of being superior to its competitors - smarter, more collegial, more ethical, more client-focused. But Cohan also reveals another way of viewing Goldman - as a secretive money-making machine that has walked an uneasy line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has assiduously cultivated power and exerted its influence over government (to the extent that Sidney Weinberg, who ran the firm for nearly forty years, advised presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy and was nicknamed 'The Politician'); a company kept in line by former CIA operatives and private investigators; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles.

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

**From the bestselling, prize-winning author of THE LAST TYCOONS and HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, feared, and controversial investment bank in the world** For much of its storied 142-year history, Goldman Sachs has projected an image of being better than its competitors--smarter, more collegial, more ethical, and far more profitable. The firm--buttressed by the most aggressive and sophisticated p.r. machine in the financial industry--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture where partners stifle their egos for the greater good, and honoring the "14 Principles," the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first."But there is another way of viewing Goldman--a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a company composed of "cyborgs" who are kept in line by an internal "reputational risk department" staffed by former CIA operatives and private investigators; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007--a bet not revealed to its clients--may have made the financial ruin of the Great Recession worse.As William D. Cohan shows in his riveting chronicle of Goldman's rise to the summit of world capitalism, the firm has shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and its enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents, court cases, SEC filings, Freedom of Information Act papers and other sources, and conducting over 100 interviews, including interviews with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (including the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal *how *Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful.Part of the answer is the firm's assiduous cultivation of people in power--dating back to 1913, when Henry Goldman advised the government on how the new Federal Reserve, designed to oversee Wall Street, should be constituted. Sidney Weinberg, who ran the firm for four decades, advised presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy and was nicknamed "The Politician" for his behind-the-scenes friendships with government officials. Goldman executives ran fundraising efforts for Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush. The firm showered lucrative consulting or speaking fees on figures like Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Summers. Famously, and fatefully, two Goldman leaders-- Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson--became Secretaries of the Treasury, where their actions both before and during the financial crisis of 2008 became the stuff of controversy and conspiracy theories. Another major strand in the firm's DNA is its eagerness to deal on both sides of a transaction, eliding questions of conflict of interest by the mere assertion of their innate honesty and nobility, a refrain repeated many times in its history, most notoriously by current Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's jesting assertion that he was doing "God's work."As Michiko Kakutani's *New York Times *review of HOUSE OF CARDS said, "Cohan writes with an insider's knowledge of the workings of Wall Street, a reporter's investigative instincts and a natural storyteller's narrative command." In MONEY & POWER, Cohan has marshaled all these gifts in a powerful and definitive account of an institution whose public claims of virtue look very much like ruthlessness when exposed to the light of day.words : 302098

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

Review "[A] definitve account of the most profitable and influential investment bank of the modern era....recounts these events capably.....[and explains] Goldman's cultivation of a reputation for brilliance unique even in the rarefied precincts of Wall Street.....gives readers the information they need to ponder whether investment banking has moved in a constructive direction."--_The New York Times Book Review_ ""_Destined to be a runaway bestseller...There's no shortage of Goldman clients, rivals, and former employees willing to explain how greed and recklessness led Goldman to become too big, too powerful, and even too conflicted to fail_. As one Goldman alum puts it, 'I saw what they did to their customers...They'd steal from them, rape them, anything they could do.' It worked like a charm...[Cohan] has produced the frankest, most detailed, most human assessment of the bank to date. Cohan portrays a firm that has grown so large and hungry that it's no longer long-term greedy but short-term vicious. And that's the wonder -- and horror -- of Goldman Sachs." -- _Businessweek " _[ Money and Power_] offers the best analysis yet of Goldman's increasingly tangled web of conflicts_...The writing is crisp and the research meticulous, drawing on reams of documents made publicly available by congressional committees and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission." -- The Economist "[E]xhaustive, revelatory account of the rise and rise of Goldman Sachs....engrossing....penetrating ....Cohan revels in a good bust-up and lingers over anecdotes involving intrigue....All the senior partners still living spoke to him, often very candidly, and only a few from the next ranks seem to have refuse....a vast trove of material" --_The Financial Times _ "A former Lazard Freres & Co. banker and newspaper reporter, Cohan brings the bank's sometimes 'schizophrenic' behavior to vivid life ...Drawing on more than 100 interviews with clients, competitors and Goldman leaders including Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein, Cohan evinces an eye for telling images and an ear for deadpan quotations." -- Bloomberg "In MONEY & POWER, journalist and former investment banker William D. Cohan launches a quixotic quest to show that Mr. Blankfein and his peers are money-sucking evil-doers that came to their riches mostly by nefarious means...( _full disclosure: I was once a Goldman Sachs employee myself )._ ...Mr. Cohan's complaints against Goldman seem to be that it is 'ruthless' in pursuit of profit; doesn't do enough to protect its instutitional clients from making bad decisions; works too closely with government; too often advises clients on both sides of a deal; and skirts close to the line of 'insider trading'." -- Mary Kissel, _The Wall Street Journal _ Praise for HOUSE OF CARDS "Like Michael Lewis’s ‘Liar’s Poker’ and Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s ‘Barbarians at the Gate,’ this volume turns complex Wall Street maneuverings into high drama that is gripping .... [His] account of its death spiral not only makes for riveting, edge-of-the-seat reading, but it also stands as a chilling cautionary tale about how greed and hubris and high-risk gambling wrecked one company."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Fascinating.”--_The Wall Street Journal_ "A riveting blow-by-blow account." --_The Economist_ "Masterfully reported....[Cohan] has turned into one of our most able financial journalists....he deploys not only his hands-on experience of this exotic corner of the financial industry but also a remarkable gift for plain-spoken explanation... It's impossible to do justice to his reportorial detail in a brief review..." --_Los Angeles Times_ Praise for THE LAST TYCOONS “Cohan’s portrayal of the firm's dominant partners—whose gargantuan appetites and mercurial habits provide the unifying force behind the book’s operatic melodramas— makes this an epic . . . In fact,_ The Last Tycoons_ bears a striking resemblance to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s_ The Last Tycoon_.”_—New York Times Book Review _ “Breezy and highly readable . . . For those of us who enjoy high-level gossip (most people) and an inside look at the machinations, triumphs, failures, and foibles of some of Wall Street’s and America’s most exalted personages, Cohan’s book is entertaining and seductively engrossing.”—_Chicago Tribune_ “Cohan not only knows where the bodies are buried but got a guided tour of the graveyard.”_—Financial Times _ “Rips the roof off of one of Wall Street’s most storied investment banks.”_—Vanity Fair_ Product Description From the bestselling, prize-winning author of THE LAST TYCOONS and HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, feared, and controversial investment bank in the world For much of its storied 142-year history, Goldman Sachs has projected an image of being better than its competitors--smarter, more collegial, more ethical, and far more profitable. The firm--buttressed by the most aggressive and sophisticated p.r. machine in the financial industry--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture where partners stifle their egos for the greater good, and honoring the "14 Principles," the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman--a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a company composed of "cyborgs" who are kept in line by an internal "reputational risk department" staffed by former CIA operatives and private investigators; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007--a bet not revealed to its clients--may have made the financial ruin of the Great Recession worse. As William D. Cohan shows in his riveting chronicle of Goldman's rise to the summit of world capitalism, the firm has shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and its enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents, court cases, SEC filings, Freedom of Information Act papers and other sources, and conducting over 100 interviews, including interviews with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (including the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. Part of the answer is the firm's assiduous cultivation of people in power--dating back to 1913, when Henry Goldman advised the government on how the new Federal Reserve, designed to oversee Wall Street, should be constituted. Sidney Weinberg, who ran the firm for four decades, advised presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy and was nicknamed "The Politician" for his behind-the-scenes friendships with government officials. Goldman executives ran fundraising efforts for Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush. The firm showered lucrative consulting or speaking fees on figures like Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Summers. Famously, and fatefully, two Goldman leaders-- Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson--became Secretaries of the Treasury, where their actions both before and during the financial crisis of 2008 became the stuff of controversy and conspiracy theories. Another major strand in the firm's DNA is its eagerness to deal on both sides of a transaction, eliding questions of conflict of interest by the mere assertion of their innate honesty and nobility, a refrain repeated many times in its history, most notoriously by current Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's jesting assertion that he was doing "God's work." As Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review of HOUSE OF CARDS said, "Cohan writes with an insider's knowledge of the workings of Wall Street, a reporter's investigative instincts and a natural storyteller's narrative command." In MONEY & POWER, Cohan has marshaled all these gifts in a powerful and definitive account of an institution whose public claims of virtue look very much like ruthlessness when exposed to the light of day.

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

Review""_Destined to be a runaway bestseller...There's no shortage of Goldman clients, rivals, and former employees willing to explain how greed and recklessness led Goldman to become too big, too powerful, and even too conflicted to fail_. As one Goldman alum puts it, 'I saw what they did to their customers...They'd steal from them, rape them, anything they could do.' It worked like a charm...[Cohan] has produced the frankest, most detailed, most human assessment of the bank to date. Cohan portrays a firm that has grown so large and hungry that it's no longer long-term greedy but short-term vicious. And that's the wonder -- and horror -- of Goldman Sachs." -- _Businessweek "_[Money and Power_] offers the best analysis yet of Goldman's increasingly tangled web of conflicts_...The writing is crisp and the research meticulous, drawing on reams of documents made publicly available by congressional committees and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission."-- The Economist "[E]xhaustive, revelatory account of the rise and rise of Goldman Sachs....engrossing....penetrating....Cohan revels in a good bust-up and lingers over anecdotes involving intrigue....All the senior partners still living spoke to him, often very candidly, and only a few from the next ranks seem to have refuse....a vast trove of material"--_The Financial Times_"A former Lazard Freres & Co. banker and newspaper reporter, Cohan brings the bank's sometimes 'schizophrenic' behavior to vivid life...Drawing on more than 100 interviews with clients, competitors and Goldman leaders including Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein, Cohan evinces an eye for telling images and an ear for deadpan quotations."-- Bloomberg "In MONEY & POWER, journalist and former investment banker William D. Cohan launches a quixotic quest to show that Mr. Blankfein and his peers are money-sucking evil-doers that came to their riches mostly by nefarious means...(_full disclosure: I was once a Goldman Sachs employee myself)._...Mr. Cohan's complaints against Goldman seem to be that it is 'ruthless' in pursuit of profit; doesn't do enough to protect its instutitional clients from making bad decisions; works too closely with government; too often advises clients on both sides of a deal; and skirts close to the line of 'insider trading'."-- Mary Kissel, _The Wall Street Journal_ Praise for HOUSE OF CARDS "Like Michael Lewis’s ‘Liar’s Poker’ and Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s ‘Barbarians at the Gate,’ this volume turns complex Wall Street maneuverings into high drama that is gripping .... [His] account of its death spiral not only makes for riveting, edge-of-the-seat reading, but it also stands as a chilling cautionary tale about how greed and hubris and high-risk gambling wrecked one company."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Fascinating.”--_The Wall Street Journal_"A riveting blow-by-blow account." --_The Economist_ "Masterfully reported....[Cohan] has turned into one of our most able financial journalists....he deploys not only his hands-on experience of this exotic corner of the financial industry but also a remarkable gift for plain-spoken explanation... It's impossible to do justice to his reportorial detail in a brief review..." --_Los Angeles Times_ Praise for THE LAST TYCOONS “Cohan’s portrayal of the firm's dominant partners—whose gargantuan appetites and mercurial habits provide the unifying force behind the book’s operatic melodramas— makes this an epic . . . In fact,_ The Last Tycoons_ bears a striking resemblance to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s_ The Last Tycoon_.”_—New York Times Book Review_“Breezy and highly readable . . . For those of us who enjoy high-level gossip (most people) and an inside look at the machinations, triumphs, failures, and foibles of some of Wall Street’s and America’s most exalted personages, Cohan’s book is entertaining and seductively engrossing.”—_Chicago Tribune_ “Cohan not only knows where the bodies are buried but got a guided tour of the graveyard.”_—Financial Times_“Rips the roof off of one of Wall Street’s most storied investment banks.”_—Vanity Fair_Product DescriptionFrom the bestselling, prize-winning author of THE LAST TYCOONS and HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, feared, and controversial investment bank in the world For much of its storied 142-year history, Goldman Sachs has projected an image of being better than its competitors--smarter, more collegial, more ethical, and far more profitable. The firm--buttressed by the most aggressive and sophisticated p.r. machine in the financial industry--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture where partners stifle their egos for the greater good, and honoring the "14 Principles," the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman--a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a company composed of "cyborgs" who are kept in line by an internal "reputational risk department" staffed by former CIA operatives and private investigators; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007--a bet not revealed to its clients--may have made the financial ruin of the Great Recession worse. As William D. Cohan shows in his riveting chronicle of Goldman's rise to the summit of world capitalism, the firm has shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and its enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents, court cases, SEC filings, Freedom of Information Act papers and other sources, and conducting over 100 interviews, including interviews with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (including the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. Part of the answer is the firm's assiduous cultivation of people in power--dating back to 1913, when Henry Goldman advised the government on how the new Federal Reserve, designed to oversee Wall Street, should be constituted. Sidney Weinberg, who ran the firm for four decades, advised presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy and was nicknamed "The Politician" for his behind-the-scenes friendships with government officials. Goldman executives ran fundraising efforts for Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush. The firm showered lucrative consulting or speaking fees on figures like Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Summers. Famously, and fatefully, two Goldman leaders-- Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson--became Secretaries of the Treasury, where their actions both before and during the financial crisis of 2008 became the stuff of controversy and conspiracy theories. Another major strand in the firm's DNA is its eagerness to deal on both sides of a transaction, eliding questions of conflict of interest by the mere assertion of their innate honesty and nobility, a refrain repeated many times in its history, most notoriously by current Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's jesting assertion that he was doing "God's work." As Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review of HOUSE OF CARDS said, "Cohan writes with an insider's knowledge of the workings of Wall Street, a reporter's investigative instincts and a natural storyteller's narrative command." In MONEY & POWER, Cohan has marshaled all these gifts in a powerful and definitive account of an institution whose public claims of virtue look very much like ruthlessness when exposed to the light of day.

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

Review ""_Destined to be a runaway bestseller...There's no shortage of Goldman clients, rivals, and former employees willing to explain how greed and recklessness led Goldman to become too big, too powerful, and even too conflicted to fail_. As one Goldman alum puts it, 'I saw what they did to their customers...They'd steal from them, rape them, anything they could do.' It worked like a charm...[Cohan] has produced the frankest, most detailed, most human assessment of the bank to date. Cohan portrays a firm that has grown so large and hungry that it's no longer long-term greedy but short-term vicious. And that's the wonder -- and horror -- of Goldman Sachs." -- _Businessweek " _[ Money and Power_] offers the best analysis yet of Goldman's increasingly tangled web of conflicts_...The writing is crisp and the research meticulous, drawing on reams of documents made publicly available by congressional committees and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission." -- The Economist "[E]xhaustive, revelatory account of the rise and rise of Goldman Sachs....engrossing....penetrating ....Cohan revels in a good bust-up and lingers over anecdotes involving intrigue....All the senior partners still living spoke to him, often very candidly, and only a few from the next ranks seem to have refuse....a vast trove of material" --_The Financial Times _ "A former Lazard Freres & Co. banker and newspaper reporter, Cohan brings the bank's sometimes 'schizophrenic' behavior to vivid life ...Drawing on more than 100 interviews with clients, competitors and Goldman leaders including Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein, Cohan evinces an eye for telling images and an ear for deadpan quotations." -- Bloomberg "In MONEY & POWER, journalist and former investment banker William D. Cohan launches a quixotic quest to show that Mr. Blankfein and his peers are money-sucking evil-doers that came to their riches mostly by nefarious means...( _full disclosure: I was once a Goldman Sachs employee myself )._ ...Mr. Cohan's complaints against Goldman seem to be that it is 'ruthless' in pursuit of profit; doesn't do enough to protect its instutitional clients from making bad decisions; works too closely with government; too often advises clients on both sides of a deal; and skirts close to the line of 'insider trading'." -- Mary Kissel, _The Wall Street Journal _ Praise for HOUSE OF CARDS "Like Michael Lewis’s ‘Liar’s Poker’ and Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s ‘Barbarians at the Gate,’ this volume turns complex Wall Street maneuverings into high drama that is gripping .... [His] account of its death spiral not only makes for riveting, edge-of-the-seat reading, but it also stands as a chilling cautionary tale about how greed and hubris and high-risk gambling wrecked one company."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Fascinating.”--_The Wall Street Journal_ "A riveting blow-by-blow account." --_The Economist_ "Masterfully reported....[Cohan] has turned into one of our most able financial journalists....he deploys not only his hands-on experience of this exotic corner of the financial industry but also a remarkable gift for plain-spoken explanation... It's impossible to do justice to his reportorial detail in a brief review..." --_Los Angeles Times_ Praise for THE LAST TYCOONS “Cohan’s portrayal of the firm's dominant partners—whose gargantuan appetites and mercurial habits provide the unifying force behind the book’s operatic melodramas— makes this an epic . . . In fact,_ The Last Tycoons_ bears a striking resemblance to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s_ The Last Tycoon_.”_—New York Times Book Review _ “Breezy and highly readable . . . For those of us who enjoy high-level gossip (most people) and an inside look at the machinations, triumphs, failures, and foibles of some of Wall Street’s and America’s most exalted personages, Cohan’s book is entertaining and seductively engrossing.”—_Chicago Tribune_ “Cohan not only knows where the bodies are buried but got a guided tour of the graveyard.”_—Financial Times _ “Rips the roof off of one of Wall Street’s most storied investment banks.”_—Vanity Fair_ Product Description From the bestselling, prize-winning author of THE LAST TYCOONS and HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, feared, and controversial investment bank in the world For much of its storied 142-year history, Goldman Sachs has projected an image of being better than its competitors--smarter, more collegial, more ethical, and far more profitable. The firm--buttressed by the most aggressive and sophisticated p.r. machine in the financial industry--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture where partners stifle their egos for the greater good, and honoring the "14 Principles," the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman--a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a company composed of "cyborgs" who are kept in line by an internal "reputational risk department" staffed by former CIA operatives and private investigators; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007--a bet not revealed to its clients--may have made the financial ruin of the Great Recession worse. As William D. Cohan shows in his riveting chronicle of Goldman's rise to the summit of world capitalism, the firm has shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and its enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents, court cases, SEC filings, Freedom of Information Act papers and other sources, and conducting over 100 interviews, including interviews with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (including the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. Part of the answer is the firm's assiduous cultivation of people in power--dating back to 1913, when Henry Goldman advised the government on how the new Federal Reserve, designed to oversee Wall Street, should be constituted. Sidney Weinberg, who ran the firm for four decades, advised presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy and was nicknamed "The Politician" for his behind-the-scenes friendships with government officials. Goldman executives ran fundraising efforts for Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush. The firm showered lucrative consulting or speaking fees on figures like Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Summers. Famously, and fatefully, two Goldman leaders-- Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson--became Secretaries of the Treasury, where their actions both before and during the financial crisis of 2008 became the stuff of controversy and conspiracy theories. Another major strand in the firm's DNA is its eagerness to deal on both sides of a transaction, eliding questions of conflict of interest by the mere assertion of their innate honesty and nobility, a refrain repeated many times in its history, most notoriously by current Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's jesting assertion that he was doing "God's work." As Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review of HOUSE OF CARDS said, "Cohan writes with an insider's knowledge of the workings of Wall Street, a reporter's investigative instincts and a natural storyteller's narrative command." In MONEY & POWER, Cohan has marshaled all these gifts in a powerful and definitive account of an institution whose public claims of virtue look very much like ruthlessness when exposed to the light of day.

The bestselling author of the acclaimed House of Cards and The Last Tycoons turns his spotlight on to Goldman Sachs and the controversy behind its success. From the outside, Goldman Sachs is a perfect company. The Goldman PR machine loudly declares it to be smarter, more ethical, and more profitable than all of its competitors. Behind closed doors, however, the firm constantly straddles the line between conflict of interest and legitimate deal making, wields significant influence over all levels of government, and upholds a culture of power struggles and toxic paranoia. And its clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007—unknown to its clients—may have made the financial ruin of the Great Recession worse. Money and Power reveals the internal schemes that have guided the bank from its founding through its remarkable windfall during the 2008 financial crisis. Through extensive research and interviews with the inside players, including current CEO Lloyd Blankfein, William Cohan constructs a nuanced, timely portrait of Goldman Sachs, the company that was too big—and too ruthless—to fail.

Review ""_Destined to be a runaway bestseller...There's no shortage of Goldman clients, rivals, and former employees willing to explain how greed and recklessness led Goldman to become too big, too powerful, and even too conflicted to fail_. As one Goldman alum puts it, 'I saw what they did to their customers...They'd steal from them, rape them, anything they could do.' It worked like a charm...[Cohan] has produced the frankest, most detailed, most human assessment of the bank to date. Cohan portrays a firm that has grown so large and hungry that it's no longer long-term greedy but short-term vicious. And that's the wonder -- and horror -- of Goldman Sachs." -- _Businessweek " _[ Money and Power_] offers the best analysis yet of Goldman's increasingly tangled web of conflicts_...The writing is crisp and the research meticulous, drawing on reams of documents made publicly available by congressional committees and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission." -- The Economist "[E]xhaustive, revelatory account of the rise and rise of Goldman Sachs....engrossing....penetrating ....Cohan revels in a good bust-up and lingers over anecdotes involving intrigue....All the senior partners still living spoke to him, often very candidly, and only a few from the next ranks seem to have refuse....a vast trove of material" --_The Financial Times _ "A former Lazard Freres & Co. banker and newspaper reporter, Cohan brings the bank's sometimes 'schizophrenic' behavior to vivid life ...Drawing on more than 100 interviews with clients, competitors and Goldman leaders including Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein, Cohan evinces an eye for telling images and an ear for deadpan quotations." -- Bloomberg "In MONEY & POWER, journalist and former investment banker William D. Cohan launches a quixotic quest to show that Mr. Blankfein and his peers are money-sucking evil-doers that came to their riches mostly by nefarious means...( _full disclosure: I was once a Goldman Sachs employee myself )._ ...Mr. Cohan's complaints against Goldman seem to be that it is 'ruthless' in pursuit of profit; doesn't do enough to protect its instutitional clients from making bad decisions; works too closely with government; too often advises clients on both sides of a deal; and skirts close to the line of 'insider trading'." -- Mary Kissel, _The Wall Street Journal _ Praise for HOUSE OF CARDS "Like Michael Lewis’s ‘Liar’s Poker’ and Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s ‘Barbarians at the Gate,’ this volume turns complex Wall Street maneuverings into high drama that is gripping .... [His] account of its death spiral not only makes for riveting, edge-of-the-seat reading, but it also stands as a chilling cautionary tale about how greed and hubris and high-risk gambling wrecked one company."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Fascinating.”--_The Wall Street Journal_ "A riveting blow-by-blow account." --_The Economist_ "Masterfully reported....[Cohan] has turned into one of our most able financial journalists....he deploys not only his hands-on experience of this exotic corner of the financial industry but also a remarkable gift for plain-spoken explanation... It's impossible to do justice to his reportorial detail in a brief review..." --_Los Angeles Times_ Praise for THE LAST TYCOONS “Cohan’s portrayal of the firm's dominant partners—whose gargantuan appetites and mercurial habits provide the unifying force behind the book’s operatic melodramas— makes this an epic . . . In fact,_ The Last Tycoons_ bears a striking resemblance to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s_ The Last Tycoon_.”_—New York Times Book Review _ “Breezy and highly readable . . . For those of us who enjoy high-level gossip (most people) and an inside look at the machinations, triumphs, failures, and foibles of some of Wall Street’s and America’s most exalted personages, Cohan’s book is entertaining and seductively engrossing.”—_Chicago Tribune_ “Cohan not only knows where the bodies are buried but got a guided tour of the graveyard.”_—Financial Times _ “Rips the roof off of one of Wall Street’s most storied investment banks.”_—Vanity Fair_ Product Description From the bestselling, prize-winning author of THE LAST TYCOONS and HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, feared, and controversial investment bank in the world For much of its storied 142-year history, Goldman Sachs has projected an image of being better than its competitors--smarter, more collegial, more ethical, and far more profitable. The firm--buttressed by the most aggressive and sophisticated p.r. machine in the financial industry--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture where partners stifle their egos for the greater good, and honoring the "14 Principles," the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman--a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a company composed of "cyborgs" who are kept in line by an internal "reputational risk department" staffed by former CIA operatives and private investigators; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007--a bet not revealed to its clients--may have made the financial ruin of the Great Recession worse. As William D. Cohan shows in his riveting chronicle of Goldman's rise to the summit of world capitalism, the firm has shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and its enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents, court cases, SEC filings, Freedom of Information Act papers and other sources, and conducting over 100 interviews, including interviews with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (including the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. Part of the answer is the firm's assiduous cultivation of people in power--dating back to 1913, when Henry Goldman advised the government on how the new Federal Reserve, designed to oversee Wall Street, should be constituted. Sidney Weinberg, who ran the firm for four decades, advised presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy and was nicknamed "The Politician" for his behind-the-scenes friendships with government officials. Goldman executives ran fundraising efforts for Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush. The firm showered lucrative consulting or speaking fees on figures like Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Summers. Famously, and fatefully, two Goldman leaders-- Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson--became Secretaries of the Treasury, where their actions both before and during the financial crisis of 2008 became the stuff of controversy and conspiracy theories. Another major strand in the firm's DNA is its eagerness to deal on both sides of a transaction, eliding questions of conflict of interest by the mere assertion of their innate honesty and nobility, a refrain repeated many times in its history, most notoriously by current Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's jesting assertion that he was doing "God's work." As Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review of HOUSE OF CARDS said, "Cohan writes with an insider's knowledge of the workings of Wall Street, a reporter's investigative instincts and a natural storyteller's narrative command." In MONEY & POWER, Cohan has marshaled all these gifts in a powerful and definitive account of an institution whose public claims of virtue look very much like ruthlessness when exposed to the light of day.

Review "[A] definitve account of the most profitable and influential investment bank of the modern era....recounts these events capably.....[and explains] Goldman's cultivation of a reputation for brilliance unique even in the rarefied precincts of Wall Street.....gives readers the information they need to ponder whether investment banking has moved in a constructive direction."--_The New York Times Book Review_ ""_Destined to be a runaway bestseller...There's no shortage of Goldman clients, rivals, and former employees willing to explain how greed and recklessness led Goldman to become too big, too powerful, and even too conflicted to fail_. As one Goldman alum puts it, 'I saw what they did to their customers...They'd steal from them, rape them, anything they could do.' It worked like a charm...[Cohan] has produced the frankest, most detailed, most human assessment of the bank to date. Cohan portrays a firm that has grown so large and hungry that it's no longer long-term greedy but short-term vicious. And that's the wonder -- and horror -- of Goldman Sachs." -- _Businessweek " _[ Money and Power_] offers the best analysis yet of Goldman's increasingly tangled web of conflicts_...The writing is crisp and the research meticulous, drawing on reams of documents made publicly available by congressional committees and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission." -- The Economist "[E]xhaustive, revelatory account of the rise and rise of Goldman Sachs....engrossing....penetrating ....Cohan revels in a good bust-up and lingers over anecdotes involving intrigue....All the senior partners still living spoke to him, often very candidly, and only a few from the next ranks seem to have refuse....a vast trove of material" --_The Financial Times _ "A former Lazard Freres & Co. banker and newspaper reporter, Cohan brings the bank's sometimes 'schizophrenic' behavior to vivid life ...Drawing on more than 100 interviews with clients, competitors and Goldman leaders including Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein, Cohan evinces an eye for telling images and an ear for deadpan quotations." -- Bloomberg "In MONEY & POWER, journalist and former investment banker William D. Cohan launches a quixotic quest to show that Mr. Blankfein and his peers are money-sucking evil-doers that came to their riches mostly by nefarious means...( _full disclosure: I was once a Goldman Sachs employee myself )._ ...Mr. Cohan's complaints against Goldman seem to be that it is 'ruthless' in pursuit of profit; doesn't do enough to protect its instutitional clients from making bad decisions; works too closely with government; too often advises clients on both sides of a deal; and skirts close to the line of 'insider trading'." -- Mary Kissel, _The Wall Street Journal _ Praise for HOUSE OF CARDS "Like Michael Lewis’s ‘Liar’s Poker’ and Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s ‘Barbarians at the Gate,’ this volume turns complex Wall Street maneuverings into high drama that is gripping .... [His] account of its death spiral not only makes for riveting, edge-of-the-seat reading, but it also stands as a chilling cautionary tale about how greed and hubris and high-risk gambling wrecked one company."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Fascinating.”--_The Wall Street Journal_ "A riveting blow-by-blow account." --_The Economist_ "Masterfully reported....[Cohan] has turned into one of our most able financial journalists....he deploys not only his hands-on experience of this exotic corner of the financial industry but also a remarkable gift for plain-spoken explanation... It's impossible to do justice to his reportorial detail in a brief review..." --_Los Angeles Times_ Praise for THE LAST TYCOONS “Cohan’s portrayal of the firm's dominant partners—whose gargantuan appetites and mercurial habits provide the unifying force behind the book’s operatic melodramas— makes this an epic . . . In fact,_ The Last Tycoons_ bears a striking resemblance to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s_ The Last Tycoon_.”_—New York Times Book Review _ “Breezy and highly readable . . . For those of us who enjoy high-level gossip (most people) and an inside look at the machinations, triumphs, failures, and foibles of some of Wall Street’s and America’s most exalted personages, Cohan’s book is entertaining and seductively engrossing.”—_Chicago Tribune_ “Cohan not only knows where the bodies are buried but got a guided tour of the graveyard.”_—Financial Times _ “Rips the roof off of one of Wall Street’s most storied investment banks.”_—Vanity Fair_ Product Description From the bestselling, prize-winning author of THE LAST TYCOONS and HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, feared, and controversial investment bank in the world For much of its storied 142-year history, Goldman Sachs has projected an image of being better than its competitors--smarter, more collegial, more ethical, and far more profitable. The firm--buttressed by the most aggressive and sophisticated p.r. machine in the financial industry--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture where partners stifle their egos for the greater good, and honoring the "14 Principles," the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman--a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a company composed of "cyborgs" who are kept in line by an internal "reputational risk department" staffed by former CIA operatives and private investigators; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007--a bet not revealed to its clients--may have made the financial ruin of the Great Recession worse. As William D. Cohan shows in his riveting chronicle of Goldman's rise to the summit of world capitalism, the firm has shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and its enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents, court cases, SEC filings, Freedom of Information Act papers and other sources, and conducting over 100 interviews, including interviews with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (including the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. Part of the answer is the firm's assiduous cultivation of people in power--dating back to 1913, when Henry Goldman advised the government on how the new Federal Reserve, designed to oversee Wall Street, should be constituted. Sidney Weinberg, who ran the firm for four decades, advised presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy and was nicknamed "The Politician" for his behind-the-scenes friendships with government officials. Goldman executives ran fundraising efforts for Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush. The firm showered lucrative consulting or speaking fees on figures like Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Summers. Famously, and fatefully, two Goldman leaders-- Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson--became Secretaries of the Treasury, where their actions both before and during the financial crisis of 2008 became the stuff of controversy and conspiracy theories. Another major strand in the firm's DNA is its eagerness to deal on both sides of a transaction, eliding questions of conflict of interest by the mere assertion of their innate honesty and nobility, a refrain repeated many times in its history, most notoriously by current Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's jesting assertion that he was doing "God's work." As Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review of HOUSE OF CARDS said, "Cohan writes with an insider's knowledge of the workings of Wall Street, a reporter's investigative instincts and a natural storyteller's narrative command." In MONEY & POWER, Cohan has marshaled all these gifts in a powerful and definitive account of an institution whose public claims of virtue look very much like ruthlessness when exposed to the light of day.

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

Review""_Destined to be a runaway bestseller...There's no shortage of Goldman clients, rivals, and former employees willing to explain how greed and recklessness led Goldman to become too big, too powerful, and even too conflicted to fail_. As one Goldman alum puts it, 'I saw what they did to their customers...They'd steal from them, rape them, anything they could do.' It worked like a charm...[Cohan] has produced the frankest, most detailed, most human assessment of the bank to date. Cohan portrays a firm that has grown so large and hungry that it's no longer long-term greedy but short-term vicious. And that's the wonder -- and horror -- of Goldman Sachs." -- _Businessweek "_[Money and Power_] offers the best analysis yet of Goldman's increasingly tangled web of conflicts_...The writing is crisp and the research meticulous, drawing on reams of documents made publicly available by congressional committees and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission."-- The Economist "[E]xhaustive, revelatory account of the rise and rise of Goldman Sachs....engrossing....penetrating....Cohan revels in a good bust-up and lingers over anecdotes involving intrigue....All the senior partners still living spoke to him, often very candidly, and only a few from the next ranks seem to have refuse....a vast trove of material"--_The Financial Times_"A former Lazard Freres & Co. banker and newspaper reporter, Cohan brings the bank's sometimes 'schizophrenic' behavior to vivid life...Drawing on more than 100 interviews with clients, competitors and Goldman leaders including Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein, Cohan evinces an eye for telling images and an ear for deadpan quotations."-- Bloomberg "In MONEY & POWER, journalist and former investment banker William D. Cohan launches a quixotic quest to show that Mr. Blankfein and his peers are money-sucking evil-doers that came to their riches mostly by nefarious means...(_full disclosure: I was once a Goldman Sachs employee myself)._...Mr. Cohan's complaints against Goldman seem to be that it is 'ruthless' in pursuit of profit; doesn't do enough to protect its instutitional clients from making bad decisions; works too closely with government; too often advises clients on both sides of a deal; and skirts close to the line of 'insider trading'."-- Mary Kissel, _The Wall Street Journal_ Praise for HOUSE OF CARDS "Like Michael Lewis’s ‘Liar’s Poker’ and Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s ‘Barbarians at the Gate,’ this volume turns complex Wall Street maneuverings into high drama that is gripping .... [His] account of its death spiral not only makes for riveting, edge-of-the-seat reading, but it also stands as a chilling cautionary tale about how greed and hubris and high-risk gambling wrecked one company."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Fascinating.”--_The Wall Street Journal_ "A riveting blow-by-blow account." --_The Economist_ "Masterfully reported....[Cohan] has turned into one of our most able financial journalists....he deploys not only his hands-on experience of this exotic corner of the financial industry but also a remarkable gift for plain-spoken explanation... It's impossible to do justice to his reportorial detail in a brief review..." --_Los Angeles Times_ Praise for THE LAST TYCOONS “Cohan’s portrayal of the firm's dominant partners—whose gargantuan appetites and mercurial habits provide the unifying force behind the book’s operatic melodramas— makes this an epic . . . In fact,_ The Last Tycoons_ bears a striking resemblance to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s_ The Last Tycoon_.”_—New York Times Book Review_“Breezy and highly readable . . . For those of us who enjoy high-level gossip (most people) and an inside look at the machinations, triumphs, failures, and foibles of some of Wall Street’s and America’s most exalted personages, Cohan’s book is entertaining and seductively engrossing.”—_Chicago Tribune_ “Cohan not only knows where the bodies are buried but got a guided tour of the graveyard.”_—Financial Times_“Rips the roof off of one of Wall Street’s most storied investment banks.”_—Vanity Fair_ Product DescriptionFrom the bestselling, prize-winning author of THE LAST TYCOONS and HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, feared, and controversial investment bank in the world For much of its storied 142-year history, Goldman Sachs has projected an image of being better than its competitors--smarter, more collegial, more ethical, and far more profitable. The firm--buttressed by the most aggressive and sophisticated p.r. machine in the financial industry--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture where partners stifle their egos for the greater good, and honoring the "14 Principles," the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman--a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a company composed of "cyborgs" who are kept in line by an internal "reputational risk department" staffed by former CIA operatives and private investigators; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007--a bet not revealed to its clients--may have made the financial ruin of the Great Recession worse. As William D. Cohan shows in his riveting chronicle of Goldman's rise to the summit of world capitalism, the firm has shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and its enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents, court cases, SEC filings, Freedom of Information Act papers and other sources, and conducting over 100 interviews, including interviews with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (including the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. Part of the answer is the firm's assiduous cultivation of people in power--dating back to 1913, when Henry Goldman advised the government on how the new Federal Reserve, designed to oversee Wall Street, should be constituted. Sidney Weinberg, who ran the firm for four decades, advised presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy and was nicknamed "The Politician" for his behind-the-scenes friendships with government officials. Goldman executives ran fundraising efforts for Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush. The firm showered lucrative consulting or speaking fees on figures like Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Summers. Famously, and fatefully, two Goldman leaders-- Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson--became Secretaries of the Treasury, where their actions both before and during the financial crisis of 2008 became the stuff of controversy and conspiracy theories. Another major strand in the firm's DNA is its eagerness to deal on both sides of a transaction, eliding questions of conflict of interest by the mere assertion of their innate honesty and nobility, a refrain repeated many times in its history, most notoriously by current Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's jesting assertion that he was doing "God's work." As Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review of HOUSE OF CARDS said, "Cohan writes with an insider's knowledge of the workings of Wall Street, a reporter's investigative instincts and a natural storyteller's narrative command." In MONEY & POWER, Cohan has marshaled all these gifts in a powerful and definitive account of an institution whose public claims of virtue look very much like ruthlessness when exposed to the light of day.

Review ""_Destined to be a runaway bestseller...There's no shortage of Goldman clients, rivals, and former employees willing to explain how greed and recklessness led Goldman to become too big, too powerful, and even too conflicted to fail_. As one Goldman alum puts it, 'I saw what they did to their customers...They'd steal from them, rape them, anything they could do.' It worked like a charm...[Cohan] has produced the frankest, most detailed, most human assessment of the bank to date. Cohan portrays a firm that has grown so large and hungry that it's no longer long-term greedy but short-term vicious. And that's the wonder -- and horror -- of Goldman Sachs." -- _Businessweek " _[ Money and Power_] offers the best analysis yet of Goldman's increasingly tangled web of conflicts_...The writing is crisp and the research meticulous, drawing on reams of documents made publicly available by congressional committees and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission." -- The Economist "[E]xhaustive, revelatory account of the rise and rise of Goldman Sachs....engrossing....penetrating ....Cohan revels in a good bust-up and lingers over anecdotes involving intrigue....All the senior partners still living spoke to him, often very candidly, and only a few from the next ranks seem to have refuse....a vast trove of material" --_The Financial Times _ "A former Lazard Freres & Co. banker and newspaper reporter, Cohan brings the bank's sometimes 'schizophrenic' behavior to vivid life ...Drawing on more than 100 interviews with clients, competitors and Goldman leaders including Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein, Cohan evinces an eye for telling images and an ear for deadpan quotations." -- Bloomberg "In MONEY & POWER, journalist and former investment banker William D. Cohan launches a quixotic quest to show that Mr. Blankfein and his peers are money-sucking evil-doers that came to their riches mostly by nefarious means...( _full disclosure: I was once a Goldman Sachs employee myself )._ ...Mr. Cohan's complaints against Goldman seem to be that it is 'ruthless' in pursuit of profit; doesn't do enough to protect its instutitional clients from making bad decisions; works too closely with government; too often advises clients on both sides of a deal; and skirts close to the line of 'insider trading'." -- Mary Kissel, _The Wall Street Journal _ Praise for HOUSE OF CARDS "Like Michael Lewis’s ‘Liar’s Poker’ and Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s ‘Barbarians at the Gate,’ this volume turns complex Wall Street maneuverings into high drama that is gripping .... [His] account of its death spiral not only makes for riveting, edge-of-the-seat reading, but it also stands as a chilling cautionary tale about how greed and hubris and high-risk gambling wrecked one company."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Fascinating.”--_The Wall Street Journal_ "A riveting blow-by-blow account." --_The Economist_ "Masterfully reported....[Cohan] has turned into one of our most able financial journalists....he deploys not only his hands-on experience of this exotic corner of the financial industry but also a remarkable gift for plain-spoken explanation... It's impossible to do justice to his reportorial detail in a brief review..." --_Los Angeles Times_ Praise for THE LAST TYCOONS “Cohan’s portrayal of the firm's dominant partners—whose gargantuan appetites and mercurial habits provide the unifying force behind the book’s operatic melodramas— makes this an epic . . . In fact,_ The Last Tycoons_ bears a striking resemblance to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s_ The Last Tycoon_.”_—New York Times Book Review _ “Breezy and highly readable . . . For those of us who enjoy high-level gossip (most people) and an inside look at the machinations, triumphs, failures, and foibles of some of Wall Street’s and America’s most exalted personages, Cohan’s book is entertaining and seductively engrossing.”—_Chicago Tribune_ “Cohan not only knows where the bodies are buried but got a guided tour of the graveyard.”_—Financial Times _ “Rips the roof off of one of Wall Street’s most storied investment banks.”_—Vanity Fair_ Product Description From the bestselling, prize-winning author of THE LAST TYCOONS and HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, feared, and controversial investment bank in the world For much of its storied 142-year history, Goldman Sachs has projected an image of being better than its competitors--smarter, more collegial, more ethical, and far more profitable. The firm--buttressed by the most aggressive and sophisticated p.r. machine in the financial industry--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture where partners stifle their egos for the greater good, and honoring the "14 Principles," the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman--a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a company composed of "cyborgs" who are kept in line by an internal "reputational risk department" staffed by former CIA operatives and private investigators; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007--a bet not revealed to its clients--may have made the financial ruin of the Great Recession worse. As William D. Cohan shows in his riveting chronicle of Goldman's rise to the summit of world capitalism, the firm has shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and its enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents, court cases, SEC filings, Freedom of Information Act papers and other sources, and conducting over 100 interviews, including interviews with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (including the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. Part of the answer is the firm's assiduous cultivation of people in power--dating back to 1913, when Henry Goldman advised the government on how the new Federal Reserve, designed to oversee Wall Street, should be constituted. Sidney Weinberg, who ran the firm for four decades, advised presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy and was nicknamed "The Politician" for his behind-the-scenes friendships with government officials. Goldman executives ran fundraising efforts for Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush. The firm showered lucrative consulting or speaking fees on figures like Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Summers. Famously, and fatefully, two Goldman leaders-- Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson--became Secretaries of the Treasury, where their actions both before and during the financial crisis of 2008 became the stuff of controversy and conspiracy theories. Another major strand in the firm's DNA is its eagerness to deal on both sides of a transaction, eliding questions of conflict of interest by the mere assertion of their innate honesty and nobility, a refrain repeated many times in its history, most notoriously by current Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's jesting assertion that he was doing "God's work." As Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review of HOUSE OF CARDS said, "Cohan writes with an insider's knowledge of the workings of Wall Street, a reporter's investigative instincts and a natural storyteller's narrative command." In MONEY & POWER, Cohan has marshaled all these gifts in a powerful and definitive account of an institution whose public claims of virtue look very much like ruthlessness when exposed to the light of day. General,Investments & Securities,Economics,Finance,Financial crises - United States - History - 21st century,Investment banking - United States - History,Finance - United States - History,Goldman; Sachs & Co,Banks & Banking,Business & Economics

На Уолл-стрит немало компаний, о которых стоило бы рассказать, но ни одна из них не вызывала столько зависти и пересудов, как Goldman Sachs. В истории Goldman Sachs немало загадок, но самая большая тайна в том, как банку удается год за годом — и в хорошие, и в плохие времена — получать огромную прибыль, не выдавая почти никому своих тайн. Еще не менее удивительная деталь — твердая уверенность ее сотрудников, что компания сможет преодолеть любые препятствия, что встают у нее на пути, и выйти с честью из любого скандала. В чем тут секрет? В мастерстве ее специалистов? В крепких связах с сильными мира сего? Или в уникальной корпоративной культуре, где все за одного, где главным провозглашают интересы клиента, а интересы фирмы отстаивают сильнее, чем собственные... Действительно ли Goldman Sachs лучше остальных? Похоже, что автор смог найти ответ на этот вопрос.

На Уолл-стрит немало компаний, о которых стоило бы рассказать, но ни одна из них не вызывала столько зависти и пересудов, как Goldman Sachs. В истории Goldman Sachs немало загадок, но самая большая тайна в том, как банку удается год за годом — и в хорошие, и в плохие времена — получать огромную прибыль, не выдавая почти никому своих тайн. Еще не менее удивительная деталь — твердая уверенность ее сотрудников, что компания сможет преодолеть любые препятствия, что встают у нее на пути, и выйти с честью из любого скандала. В чем тут секрет? В мастерстве ее специалистов? В крепких связах с сильными мира сего? Или в уникальной корпоративной культуре, где все за одного, где главным провозглашают интересы клиента, а интересы фирмы отстаивают сильнее, чем собственные... Действительно ли Goldman Sachs лучше остальных? Похоже, что автор смог найти ответ на этот вопрос.

Review""\_Destined to be a runaway bestseller...There's no shortage of Goldman clients, rivals, and former employees willing to explain how greed and recklessness led Goldman to become too big, too powerful, and even too conflicted to fail\_. As one Goldman alum puts it, 'I saw what they did to their customers...They'd steal from them, rape them, anything they could do.' It worked like a charm...[Cohan] has produced the frankest, most detailed, most human assessment of the bank to date. Cohan portrays a firm that has grown so large and hungry that it's no longer long-term greedy but short-term vicious. And that's the wonder -- and horror -- of Goldman Sachs." -- \_Businessweek "\_[Money and Power\_] offers the best analysis yet of Goldman's increasingly tangled web of conflicts\_...The writing is crisp and the research meticulous, drawing on reams of documents made publicly available by congressional committees and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission."-- The Economist "[E]xhaustive, revelatory account of the rise and rise of Goldman Sachs....engrossing....penetrating....Cohan revels in a good bust-up and lingers over anecdotes involving intrigue....All the senior partners still living spoke to him, often very candidly, and only a few from the next ranks seem to have refuse....a vast trove of material"--\_The Financial Times\_"A former Lazard Freres & Co. banker and newspaper reporter, Cohan brings the bank's sometimes 'schizophrenic' behavior to vivid life...Drawing on more than 100 interviews with clients, competitors and Goldman leaders including Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein, Cohan evinces an eye for telling images and an ear for deadpan quotations."-- Bloomberg "In MONEY & POWER, journalist and former investment banker William D. Cohan launches a quixotic quest to show that Mr. Blankfein and his peers are money-sucking evil-doers that came to their riches mostly by nefarious means...(\_full disclosure: I was once a Goldman Sachs employee myself).\_...Mr. Cohan's complaints against Goldman seem to be that it is 'ruthless' in pursuit of profit; doesn't do enough to protect its instutitional clients from making bad decisions; works too closely with government; too often advises clients on both sides of a deal; and skirts close to the line of 'insider trading'."-- Mary Kissel, \_The Wall Street Journal\_ Praise for HOUSE OF CARDS "Like Michael Lewis’s ‘Liar’s Poker’ and Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s ‘Barbarians at the Gate,’ this volume turns complex Wall Street maneuverings into high drama that is gripping .... [His] account of its death spiral not only makes for riveting, edge-of-the-seat reading, but it also stands as a chilling cautionary tale about how greed and hubris and high-risk gambling wrecked one company."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Fascinating.”--\_The Wall Street Journal\_ "A riveting blow-by-blow account." --\_The Economist\_ "Masterfully reported....[Cohan] has turned into one of our most able financial journalists....he deploys not only his hands-on experience of this exotic corner of the financial industry but also a remarkable gift for plain-spoken explanation... It's impossible to do justice to his reportorial detail in a brief review..." --\_Los Angeles Times\_ Praise for THE LAST TYCOONS “Cohan’s portrayal of the firm's dominant partners—whose gargantuan appetites and mercurial habits provide the unifying force behind the book’s operatic melodramas— makes this an epic . . . In fact,\_ The Last Tycoons\_ bears a striking resemblance to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s\_ The Last Tycoon\_.”\_—New York Times Book Review\_“Breezy and highly readable . . . For those of us who enjoy high-level gossip (most people) and an inside look at the machinations, triumphs, failures, and foibles of some of Wall Street’s and America’s most exalted personages, Cohan’s book is entertaining and seductively engrossing.”—\_Chicago Tribune\_ “Cohan not only knows where the bodies are buried but got a guided tour of the graveyard.”\_—Financial Times\_“Rips the roof off of one of Wall Street’s most storied investment banks.”\_—Vanity Fair\_ Product DescriptionFrom the bestselling, prize-winning author of THE LAST TYCOONS and HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, feared, and controversial investment bank in the world For much of its storied 142-year history, Goldman Sachs has projected an image of being better than its competitors--smarter, more collegial, more ethical, and far more profitable. The firm--buttressed by the most aggressive and sophisticated p.r. machine in the financial industry--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture where partners stifle their egos for the greater good, and honoring the "14 Principles," the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman--a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a company composed of "cyborgs" who are kept in line by an internal "reputational risk department" staffed by former CIA operatives and private investigators; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007--a bet not revealed to its clients--may have made the financial ruin of the Great Recession worse. As William D. Cohan shows in his riveting chronicle of Goldman's rise to the summit of world capitalism, the firm has shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and its enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents, court cases, SEC filings, Freedom of Information Act papers and other sources, and conducting over 100 interviews, including interviews with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (including the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. Part of the answer is the firm's assiduous cultivation of people in power--dating back to 1913, when Henry Goldman advised the government on how the new Federal Reserve, designed to oversee Wall Street, should be constituted. Sidney Weinberg, who ran the firm for four decades, advised presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy and was nicknamed "The Politician" for his behind-the-scenes friendships with government officials. Goldman executives ran fundraising efforts for Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush. The firm showered lucrative consulting or speaking fees on figures like Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Summers. Famously, and fatefully, two Goldman leaders-- Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson--became Secretaries of the Treasury, where their actions both before and during the financial crisis of 2008 became the stuff of controversy and conspiracy theories. Another major strand in the firm's DNA is its eagerness to deal on both sides of a transaction, eliding questions of conflict of interest by the mere assertion of their innate honesty and nobility, a refrain repeated many times in its history, most notoriously by current Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's jesting assertion that he was doing "God's work." As Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review of HOUSE OF CARDS said, "Cohan writes with an insider's knowledge of the workings of Wall Street, a reporter's investigative instincts and a natural storyteller's narrative command." In MONEY & POWER, Cohan has marshaled all these gifts in a powerful and definitive account of an institution whose public claims of virtue look very much like ruthlessness when exposed to the light of day.

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, controversial and feared investment bank in the world Goldman Sachs has always projected an image of being better than its competitors. The firm--buttressed by an aggressive and sophisticated PR machine--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture of "the greater good," and honoring the 14 Principles, the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman -- a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007 -- a bet not revealed to its clients -- may have made the Great Recession worse. The firm has also shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents and conducting over 100 interviews, including those with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (as well as the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He writes frequently for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post . A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University's School of Journalism and Graduate School of Business

Review""\_Destined to be a runaway bestseller...There's no shortage of Goldman clients, rivals, and former employees willing to explain how greed and recklessness led Goldman to become too big, too powerful, and even too conflicted to fail\_. As one Goldman alum puts it, 'I saw what they did to their customers...They'd steal from them, rape them, anything they could do.' It worked like a charm...[Cohan] has produced the frankest, most detailed, most human assessment of the bank to date. Cohan portrays a firm that has grown so large and hungry that it's no longer long-term greedy but short-term vicious. And that's the wonder -- and horror -- of Goldman Sachs." -- \_Businessweek "\_[Money and Power\_] offers the best analysis yet of Goldman's increasingly tangled web of conflicts\_...The writing is crisp and the research meticulous, drawing on reams of documents made publicly available by congressional committees and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission."-- The Economist "[E]xhaustive, revelatory account of the rise and rise of Goldman Sachs....engrossing....penetrating....Cohan revels in a good bust-up and lingers over anecdotes involving intrigue....All the senior partners still living spoke to him, often very candidly, and only a few from the next ranks seem to have refuse....a vast trove of material"--\_The Financial Times\_"A former Lazard Freres & Co. banker and newspaper reporter, Cohan brings the bank's sometimes 'schizophrenic' behavior to vivid life...Drawing on more than 100 interviews with clients, competitors and Goldman leaders including Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein, Cohan evinces an eye for telling images and an ear for deadpan quotations."-- Bloomberg "In MONEY & POWER, journalist and former investment banker William D. Cohan launches a quixotic quest to show that Mr. Blankfein and his peers are money-sucking evil-doers that came to their riches mostly by nefarious means...(\_full disclosure: I was once a Goldman Sachs employee myself).\_...Mr. Cohan's complaints against Goldman seem to be that it is 'ruthless' in pursuit of profit; doesn't do enough to protect its instutitional clients from making bad decisions; works too closely with government; too often advises clients on both sides of a deal; and skirts close to the line of 'insider trading'."-- Mary Kissel, \_The Wall Street Journal\_ Praise for HOUSE OF CARDS "Like Michael Lewis’s ‘Liar’s Poker’ and Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s ‘Barbarians at the Gate,’ this volume turns complex Wall Street maneuverings into high drama that is gripping .... [His] account of its death spiral not only makes for riveting, edge-of-the-seat reading, but it also stands as a chilling cautionary tale about how greed and hubris and high-risk gambling wrecked one company."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Fascinating.”--\_The Wall Street Journal\_ "A riveting blow-by-blow account." --\_The Economist\_ "Masterfully reported....[Cohan] has turned into one of our most able financial journalists....he deploys not only his hands-on experience of this exotic corner of the financial industry but also a remarkable gift for plain-spoken explanation... It's impossible to do justice to his reportorial detail in a brief review..." --\_Los Angeles Times\_ Praise for THE LAST TYCOONS “Cohan’s portrayal of the firm's dominant partners—whose gargantuan appetites and mercurial habits provide the unifying force behind the book’s operatic melodramas— makes this an epic . . . In fact,\_ The Last Tycoons\_ bears a striking resemblance to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s\_ The Last Tycoon\_.”\_—New York Times Book Review\_“Breezy and highly readable . . . For those of us who enjoy high-level gossip (most people) and an inside look at the machinations, triumphs, failures, and foibles of some of Wall Street’s and America’s most exalted personages, Cohan’s book is entertaining and seductively engrossing.”—\_Chicago Tribune\_ “Cohan not only knows where the bodies are buried but got a guided tour of the graveyard.”\_—Financial Times\_“Rips the roof off of one of Wall Street’s most storied investment banks.”\_—Vanity Fair\_ Product DescriptionFrom the bestselling, prize-winning author of THE LAST TYCOONS and HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, feared, and controversial investment bank in the world For much of its storied 142-year history, Goldman Sachs has projected an image of being better than its competitors--smarter, more collegial, more ethical, and far more profitable. The firm--buttressed by the most aggressive and sophisticated p.r. machine in the financial industry--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture where partners stifle their egos for the greater good, and honoring the "14 Principles," the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman--a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a company composed of "cyborgs" who are kept in line by an internal "reputational risk department" staffed by former CIA operatives and private investigators; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007--a bet not revealed to its clients--may have made the financial ruin of the Great Recession worse. As William D. Cohan shows in his riveting chronicle of Goldman's rise to the summit of world capitalism, the firm has shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and its enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents, court cases, SEC filings, Freedom of Information Act papers and other sources, and conducting over 100 interviews, including interviews with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (including the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. Part of the answer is the firm's assiduous cultivation of people in power--dating back to 1913, when Henry Goldman advised the government on how the new Federal Reserve, designed to oversee Wall Street, should be constituted. Sidney Weinberg, who ran the firm for four decades, advised presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy and was nicknamed "The Politician" for his behind-the-scenes friendships with government officials. Goldman executives ran fundraising efforts for Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush. The firm showered lucrative consulting or speaking fees on figures like Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Summers. Famously, and fatefully, two Goldman leaders-- Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson--became Secretaries of the Treasury, where their actions both before and during the financial crisis of 2008 became the stuff of controversy and conspiracy theories. Another major strand in the firm's DNA is its eagerness to deal on both sides of a transaction, eliding questions of conflict of interest by the mere assertion of their innate honesty and nobility, a refrain repeated many times in its history, most notoriously by current Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's jesting assertion that he was doing "God's work." As Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review of HOUSE OF CARDS said, "Cohan writes with an insider's knowledge of the workings of Wall Street, a reporter's investigative instincts and a natural storyteller's narrative command." In MONEY & POWER, Cohan has marshaled all these gifts in a powerful and definitive account of an institution whose public claims of virtue look very much like ruthlessness when exposed to the light of day.

Review""\_Destined to be a runaway bestseller...There's no shortage of Goldman clients, rivals, and former employees willing to explain how greed and recklessness led Goldman to become too big, too powerful, and even too conflicted to fail\_. As one Goldman alum puts it, 'I saw what they did to their customers...They'd steal from them, rape them, anything they could do.' It worked like a charm...[Cohan] has produced the frankest, most detailed, most human assessment of the bank to date. Cohan portrays a firm that has grown so large and hungry that it's no longer long-term greedy but short-term vicious. And that's the wonder -- and horror -- of Goldman Sachs." -- \_Businessweek "\_[Money and Power\_] offers the best analysis yet of Goldman's increasingly tangled web of conflicts\_...The writing is crisp and the research meticulous, drawing on reams of documents made publicly available by congressional committees and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission."-- The Economist "[E]xhaustive, revelatory account of the rise and rise of Goldman Sachs....engrossing....penetrating....Cohan revels in a good bust-up and lingers over anecdotes involving intrigue....All the senior partners still living spoke to him, often very candidly, and only a few from the next ranks seem to have refuse....a vast trove of material"--\_The Financial Times\_"A former Lazard Freres & Co. banker and newspaper reporter, Cohan brings the bank's sometimes 'schizophrenic' behavior to vivid life...Drawing on more than 100 interviews with clients, competitors and Goldman leaders including Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein, Cohan evinces an eye for telling images and an ear for deadpan quotations."-- Bloomberg "In MONEY & POWER, journalist and former investment banker William D. Cohan launches a quixotic quest to show that Mr. Blankfein and his peers are money-sucking evil-doers that came to their riches mostly by nefarious means...(\_full disclosure: I was once a Goldman Sachs employee myself).\_...Mr. Cohan's complaints against Goldman seem to be that it is 'ruthless' in pursuit of profit; doesn't do enough to protect its instutitional clients from making bad decisions; works too closely with government; too often advises clients on both sides of a deal; and skirts close to the line of 'insider trading'."-- Mary Kissel, \_The Wall Street Journal\_ Praise for HOUSE OF CARDS "Like Michael Lewis’s ‘Liar’s Poker’ and Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s ‘Barbarians at the Gate,’ this volume turns complex Wall Street maneuverings into high drama that is gripping .... [His] account of its death spiral not only makes for riveting, edge-of-the-seat reading, but it also stands as a chilling cautionary tale about how greed and hubris and high-risk gambling wrecked one company."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Fascinating.”--\_The Wall Street Journal\_ "A riveting blow-by-blow account." --\_The Economist\_ "Masterfully reported....[Cohan] has turned into one of our most able financial journalists....he deploys not only his hands-on experience of this exotic corner of the financial industry but also a remarkable gift for plain-spoken explanation... It's impossible to do justice to his reportorial detail in a brief review..." --\_Los Angeles Times\_ Praise for THE LAST TYCOONS “Cohan’s portrayal of the firm's dominant partners—whose gargantuan appetites and mercurial habits provide the unifying force behind the book’s operatic melodramas— makes this an epic . . . In fact,\_ The Last Tycoons\_ bears a striking resemblance to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s\_ The Last Tycoon\_.”\_—New York Times Book Review\_“Breezy and highly readable . . . For those of us who enjoy high-level gossip (most people) and an inside look at the machinations, triumphs, failures, and foibles of some of Wall Street’s and America’s most exalted personages, Cohan’s book is entertaining and seductively engrossing.”—\_Chicago Tribune\_ “Cohan not only knows where the bodies are buried but got a guided tour of the graveyard.”\_—Financial Times\_“Rips the roof off of one of Wall Street’s most storied investment banks.”\_—Vanity Fair\_ Product DescriptionFrom the bestselling, prize-winning author of THE LAST TYCOONS and HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, feared, and controversial investment bank in the world For much of its storied 142-year history, Goldman Sachs has projected an image of being better than its competitors--smarter, more collegial, more ethical, and far more profitable. The firm--buttressed by the most aggressive and sophisticated p.r. machine in the financial industry--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture where partners stifle their egos for the greater good, and honoring the "14 Principles," the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first." But there is another way of viewing Goldman--a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a company composed of "cyborgs" who are kept in line by an internal "reputational risk department" staffed by former CIA operatives and private investigators; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007--a bet not revealed to its clients--may have made the financial ruin of the Great Recession worse. As William D. Cohan shows in his riveting chronicle of Goldman's rise to the summit of world capitalism, the firm has shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and its enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents, court cases, SEC filings, Freedom of Information Act papers and other sources, and conducting over 100 interviews, including interviews with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (including the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful. Part of the answer is the firm's assiduous cultivation of people in power--dating back to 1913, when Henry Goldman advised the government on how the new Federal Reserve, designed to oversee Wall Street, should be constituted. Sidney Weinberg, who ran the firm for four decades, advised presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy and was nicknamed "The Politician" for his behind-the-scenes friendships with government officials. Goldman executives ran fundraising efforts for Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush. The firm showered lucrative consulting or speaking fees on figures like Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Summers. Famously, and fatefully, two Goldman leaders-- Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson--became Secretaries of the Treasury, where their actions both before and during the financial crisis of 2008 became the stuff of controversy and conspiracy theories. Another major strand in the firm's DNA is its eagerness to deal on both sides of a transaction, eliding questions of conflict of interest by the mere assertion of their innate honesty and nobility, a refrain repeated many times in its history, most notoriously by current Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's jesting assertion that he was doing "God's work." As Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review of HOUSE OF CARDS said, "Cohan writes with an insider's knowledge of the workings of Wall Street, a reporter's investigative instincts and a natural storyteller's narrative command." In MONEY & POWER, Cohan has marshaled all these gifts in a powerful and definitive account of an institution whose public claims of virtue look very much like ruthlessness when exposed to the light of day.