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Intelligence Squared
What Does It Take to Run Goldman Sachs During a Meltdown? With Former CEO Lloyd Blankfein
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Lloyd Blankfein
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Mia Sorrenti
welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. What does it take to lead one of the world's most powerful banks when the global financial system is on the brink of collapse? On today's episode, Lloyd Blankfein joined us to reflect on his tenure as CEO of Goldman Sachs during 2008 financial crisis and beyond. In conversation with Lionel Barbour, he discusses his journey from the public housing projects of Brooklyn to the heights of Wall Street. This episode is created in partnership with Guinness Global Investors. Guinness Global Investors is an independent British fund manager that helps both individuals and institutions harness the future drivers of growth to achieve their investment goals. To find out more, you can head over to guinnessgi.com or see the link in the episode description. But now let's join our host, Lionel Barber with more.
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Lionel Barber
I'm Lionel Barber and it's my great pleasure to have a chance to have a conversation with Lloyd Blankfein, who for many years was the CEO and chairman of Goldman Sachs. And I should declare that Lloyd and I have known each other for 20 years and I think we can count ourselves as friends, even if, as we shall hear, we occasionally have our differences, as is natural. Lloyd, let me first say congratulations on Streetwise. It's really very well written. Can you tell us a little bit about the creative process and writing?
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Lloyd Blankfein
Well, in all honesty, in doing this, actually there was a lot of writing involved in everything that I did and, and it always took me a long time. And so it really was a high bar to get over. And the way I got myself to do it was I didn't think I was writing a book. When I had finished, I came away with some stories, some lessons. I still remained friends with a million people at Goldman Sachs. They called me up, asked me for advice, and the course of things. They would remind me of this anecdote and that anecdote. And buried in the anecdotes, of course, were lessons. We'd all gone through cauldrons of fire, as you well know, having reported on a lot of it at the ft. And so I thought I would just write about episodes, write about the culture of the firm, write about travel, write about things I liked and didn't like. And, you know, I have a. You know, I think it's a funny writing style. People like, people have enjoyed it. Again, it was a high bar to get over. If I thought I was writing a memoir, I wouldn't have started. I thought what really got connected to me was, you know, let me just write something so that my kids would understand me a little bit better. They would understand why I wasn't there, why I was traveling, why, at least I thought it was important. And so I started to write. I started to write about my childhood. My own parents died when I was relatively young, in my early 30s. Question, million questions I'd like to ask them. And my questions my kids haven't asked me yet, but eventually they would. And maybe when they would ask me, I wouldn't be around to tell it to them. So I thought I would write things out. And it just kept on going.
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Lionel Barber
Yeah, we're gonna talk about some of the career highlights. And you were. You led Goldman Sachs through the global financial crisis. You were in charge from 2006 to 2018. And I think it's fair to say one of the most if important bankers in the world now. But let's just start with Goldman Sachs. It's a special place. It attracts awe and sometimes envy. There are some extraordinarily smart people who work at Goldman Sachs. How did you get into Goldman Sachs in the first place? Because you came from fairly humble origins? I did.
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Lloyd Blankfein
I grew up in public housing here, I think would be called council housing in the uk. My dad worked at the post office as a mail sorter. He lived in my house with my grandmother and my sister, who at an early age had a baby with my nephew. There's a lot of. Notwithstanding a lot of commentary, there is a lot of upward Mobility and a lot of opportunity. I went to, I got a scholarship to a prestigious university. It's a long story about how I got around to applying to it. They actually went around and solicited applications to.
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Lionel Barber
I think it's called Harvard.
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Lloyd Blankfein
It is called Harvard, still called Harvard. I think hopefully the current government won't get its way and there still will be a Harvard at the end of the day, but it still exists as of the moment and they were very good about it and they brought me in and I write about in the book some of the, some of the trials of going there. Having gone from a very, you know, a poor performing high school in a, in, in a kind of a depressed area and finding myself at Harvard with a lot of people who'd gone to, you know, you know, elite private schools and you know, it's funny stories and I think things have changed in those days that long ago, 50 years ago at this point, scholarship kids like myself worked part time jobs. In fact were expected to work part time jobs also including serving in the food halls to my classmates who didn't have to have part time jobs. So there's stories in and about that but I was lucky because in some ways it created a lot of motivation to me. I didn't have to source my motivation, I was handed my motivation. And in some cases when I look at my own kids and other people and I realized this existed at the time for people who were well healed. There are burdens and benefits to every situation and if you grow up especially, well, not only do you have to, you have to, you have to source your motivation sometimes. I never had to do that.
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Lionel Barber
Yeah, it's a great story about social mobility in America. Lloyd, you became a tax lawyer. You got fairly soon bored with that and joined a trader called Jay Aaron which was later acquired by Goldman Sachs.
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Lloyd Blankfein
Yes, I went through Harvard and got through it. There's again funny stories about that because I was way, way far behind when I started and by the end of it everybody catches up and went through again in the States if you continue your liberal arts education, a lot of that is going to law school and a lot of people go to law school never intending to practice law. But I left law school with a lot of debt and so guess what? I needed a job and the best paying jobs at that point were in law firms. So I pract practice law in a law firm. But it really wasn't, it really wasn't for me. It didn't match my ADD kind of a personality. And I looked for Other opportunities. And I lived in New York financial town. I applied to Wall street firms and didn't get into any, including Goldman Sachs. And I have a lot of my reverence for Goldman started at that point because they were smart enough to have rejected me. On the other hand, I did get a job at a small commodity trading firm called J. Aaron Co. And. And Goldman bought that firm. And that's how I got into Goldman. So some people have said they've tried many times and finally got accepted at Goldman. I actually never got accepted at Goldman Sachs. I got rejected, but I got in by acquisition.
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Lionel Barber
I think this book has got some great tips about managing talent and please talk about that. But also about kind of climbing the corporate ladder. And you were actually very good at it. Tell us, what's the secret sauce?
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Lloyd Blankfein
Well, I would say at Goldman, which again, I use the word reverence. I really have a lot of appreciation for the firm and it really does attract talented people and the network is spectacular. And a lot of that has to do with the culture of the firm. But I would say that when I first got into Goldman, having got it rejected at Goldman originally I came in the J. Aaron division which after the acquisition I spent a lot of time trying to avoid the people that had turned me down when I had applied to Goldman. And then after a few years when I was doing well, they spent a lot of their time trying to avoid me as things always turn out. But I did go into the commodity division and it really suited. It suited my personality, markets in general, I am sort of. I follow them. I'm very detail oriented. I like reading, I like learning about things. I'm very curious. And so the macro world, there's a lot of different kinds of trading. But what particularly suited me were macro events and themes that moved markets in general. And commodities is generally a reflection of supply and demand and other macro themes. I think the thing and the lesson about Goldman is that it really does attract very bright people who are very, again, very ambitious in a good way, generally socially conscious people. If people who are good enough to do well at Goldman Sachs just wanted to maximize their income, the investment bankers would go to boutiques and the traders would go to hedge funds and the investors would go to private equity firm. But there is a sense at Goldman that there's a public element to what Goldman does. In other words, we learn in school about the invisible hands, about finding sourcing capital, being a trusted advisor, going out and looking for opportunities to invest really for the benefit of the economy and for wealth creation. That really drives social advancement, frankly. And that's an ethic that exists within Goldman. And one of the reasons why the network is so good is that a lot of people go to Goldman never expecting to spend their entire working lives there. They go there for a start. I don't doubt that a lot of people are going there to make some money, but they're not there to maximize their wealth because they generally leave after six years, eight years, 10 years. Some people stay longer like I did, but most don't. And then generally they go into government or other public service jobs.
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Lionel Barber
Yeah, it's an extraordinary roster of talent. If you think of prime ministers who worked for Goldman, Rishi Sunak, Mark Carney. If you think of treasury secretaries who've worked at Goldman, you've got Hank Paulson, you've got Bob Rubin.
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Lloyd Blankfein
If you think of Steve Friedman, National Economic. So my last five of my last
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Lionel Barber
six predecessors, Chairman of the BBC. Not just one, two in the last few years.
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Lloyd Blankfein
No, that's right, the prime Minister of Austria. And you can go very essential bankers and also our share of managers of private equity firms and hedge funds and other kinds of businesses. And by the way, we're in the again in the roster of banks we have. I know Goldman tends to be top of mind, but we're relatively small firm. When I was there, it was 35,000 people which had already expanded. But it's not the tens, you know, the hundreds of couple of hundred thousands of people that the largest banks in the world have.
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Lionel Barber
Yeah, that's true. You are very lean. I mean, just nail this soubriquet which sometimes is attached to Goldman Sachs, which is government Sachs. And you say, actually this is really a bit of a nonsense because it's not a revolving door, it's more just a very special network.
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Lloyd Blankfein
Right? Oh, I don't mind it at all. I thought, you know, it's very funny sometimes the changes in context turns thinking on the heads. I thought it was once, you know, it was once considered a very important thing for people to have gone, you know, the most capable people to go into public service and to go into government. Suddenly it became a pejorative that we put people into that people leave Goldman and go into public. I say public service, including government service. But that's an ethically, by the way, we don't teach that at the firm. We get people who are inspired to go in that direction. And in contrast to the revolving door, it's not that Goldman Sachs is hiring people generally from government jobs so that we can acquire their Influence. It's government that's hiring from Goldman Sachs.
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Lionel Barber
There you go.
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Lloyd Blankfein
These are everybody. Everybody you've named, and I'd name it, for the most part, started their careers at Goldman and went into public service because they always had it in their minds that they wanted to do it. And in all frankness, I love the firm. But you know, the 22nd year, you're baying for some IPO, for some somebody, it sort of loses, you know, for some people it loses its allure. And you want new challenges and you want to make different kinds of contributions to the world.
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Lionel Barber
Indeed. And we are going to come to the global financial crisis, which really was a seismic event for the bank and a real challenge for you as a leader. But I just want to talk about one event which shaped Goldman Sachs for a generation, which was going public because previously it was a partnership, some people would say was two events because it was also the acquisition of Jay Aaron, where the traders became much more influential, if not took over the bank. But you can attack that or tackle that. Let's go to the point about going public because a number of people in senior positions had public reservations about this. They thought it would undermine or dilute the bank's culture. What do you say to that? Because you went through it.
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Lloyd Blankfein
Sure. Now, the culture of the firm was an ownership culture, a partnership culture. And by the way, we could talk a long time about that, but that's really consequential. People feel like they own the firm and they get very affected by it. So what's the consequence of that? It means you don't just worry about your area at Goldman Sachs. If the firm has one reputation, if there's a problem, if you're a banker in New York and somebody does something bad in London in trading, it affects your reputation and your lives, your living, but also your sense of status in the world. So people have very sense of ownership and partnership. And people didn't want to lose that. They generally weren't there to maximize their income. They were there. I mean, listen, don't deny it. People wanted to have a good income, but they already had that. And again, these are people you get compensated in many different ways in this world in prestige and influence. And those things ranked highly at Goldman Sachs. And they didn't want to lose that by becoming just another public company owned by the shareholders, where people were just working in their silos. And by the way, we can get to this. One of the big things in my career was trying to maintain that sense of ownership and partnership, even after we became public. But why did we come public? It wasn't because again, people wanted a one time increase in their wealth, which people who are at the senior levels of the firm were already pretty wealthy. We became public because we wanted to maintain all those things that made Goldman Sachs its influence, its importance in the world, its prestige, client base. And in an era, what happened, the evolution of markets and the evolution of the financial sector was merely being an advisor wasn't enough. And that's what Goldman Sachs was. But we were increasingly competing with other institutions that would offer advice, albeit not as good as ours, but they had the balance sheet and the financial heft to make their advice a reality by financing people who sought to follow their advice. And we were just too small, too thinly capitalized to do that. So in order to be relevant in the way we want it to be, we had to increase our balance sheet. And the only way to do that was to go public. We tried other things. We took in private capital. We did transactions with Sumitomo bank where they got a piece of our firm for capital, Hawaiian Educational Trust. But we were really trying to jerry rig what only could have been accomplished in a public forum. So that debate went on and on at Goldman and again at Goldman with its ownership country culture, everybody had its say. We had various meetings and if we had at that time 150 partners, 148 spoke up and gave their point of view. But eventually we had to accede to the reality and glad that we did. You mentioned the financial crisis, which I'm sure we'll get there. How would we have survived that if we weren't by then a public company and we were private company where individual partners could withdraw their capital accounts and leave the firm devoid of capital at a time when capital was really needed.
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Lionel Barber
I think one of the advantages of reading this book is that Lloyd does actually, you do actually point one or two fingers at individuals who were bleating in public about that's my firm, the term by the way, bleating about the risks of going public. But actually when it came to it, they were quite happy to sign up
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Lloyd Blankfein
and take that money. Well, there's also a sense of, you know, you're also making, when you're speaking to your partners, you're making public statements. And I guess it was since there would be a windfall for the partner, the people who were then partners, everyone was a little bit sheepish and embarrassed about acknowledging the benefits that would accrue to them if they went public. So everyone there was a Very, very big incentive to be on the side of staying private. Even though at that point it felt inevitable to almost everybody. But it wasn't. Nobody wanted to stand up and say first really I think we should go public and I should be enriched thereby. And therefore people were very, very reticent about it. By the way, that's part of the culture also. It sounds sort of quaint and you know, it sounds hypocritical, but there's a certain charm to that because people understood they didn't really want to, they didn't want to be perceived as foregoing the things that were deemed to be importance to the culture of Goldman Sachs merely for enriching themselves in the short term. And that. And by the way, that wasn't just a hollow statement. I think people really felt like that. I felt that way. Although being the practical markets oriented person who had to compete in a world of institutions with bigger balance sheets, I recognize that inevitability maybe earlier than most.
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Lionel Barber
You took over in 2006, you had a golden year in 2007. And then bear Stearns went down and then Lehman went down. How close did Goldman Sachs come to the precipice?
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Lloyd Blankfein
I think, and this is very important because people have talked about this, written about, I think the entire system could have was at the precious. Let me tell you what happens in a financial crisis. You don't know. Everybody stands on a table and says we're perfectly solvent. Bear Stearns did that, Lehman Brothers did that and turns out to be wrong. And so what happens in the market is you are not really sure who's money good on obligations. And in a financial system that we have, you do a transaction with me, I owe you money, you owe somebody else's money. The money I'm supposed to give you then goes to somebody else. And that daisy chain of payments happens millions of times a day between thousands of institutions. Well, if you're unsure of the creditworthiness of your counterparty, what you really do, what you really want to do is you are eager to get paid by your counterparty, but you slow walk the payment you make to somebody else because you don't know if they'll deliver on their obligation. And if everybody is perfectly willing to be paid first but not to pay anybody else until they get paid, the system freezes. Everybody would have been insolvent eventually in the sense of their inability to meet their required payments as they arose. Not necessarily bankrupt in terms of your assets being worth less than your liabilities, but insolvent in the sense that you couldn't meet your obligations. They arose because nothing was coming into you. The system froze. What was the likelihood? And by the way, Goldman, among all the institutions, was very, very. Not only had a lot of capital, but very, very solvent. And that was borne out by people looking at us and watching us. But it would have eventually ensnared everyone. We would have gone before some, but eventually, and when I say everyone who knows, what were the odds of that happen? It was not a probability, but it was a large possibility. And we all go to sleep at night. We would be very sleepless if we didn't insure ourselves against 1% and 2% risks or minimal risks against something happening. This was a highly consequential possibility of it happening. And people twist my arm and what were the odds of that kind of a freeze happening? It could have been something between, I said in the book, could it have been 15 to 20% of it happening? And then I pointed out 15 to 20% is kind of like a turn in Russian roulette. Who wants to play Russian roulette? So I think the people in the official sector who work to prevent that from happening, there'll be second guess, my God, you should have let this happen. You should have let it play out. But really, who wants to take, by the way, what would the consequences have been? We could have had an enormous depression.
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Lionel Barber
Indeed. More broadly, Lloyd, what lessons do you draw from the global financial crisis about what is loosely described as financial capitalism?
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Lloyd Blankfein
Well, look, financial capitalism is the greatest system for generating wealth ever devised, which is why it pertains today. And obviously the financial system has two main tasks. One is to generate wealth, the other task is to distribute it according to the values of your society. And arguably it's been much better at accruing wealth and developing wealth. And, you know, the polarization we see in society is an indication that maybe it hasn't done as well at distributing that wealth in term, you know, in keeping with the values of society. Which is why we have a bit of, you know, we have, you know, some polarization in the country and a lot of things in the last several years emanated from it. But I think other lessons that I gleaned from the financial crisis, which kind of I knew a lot of going in, is that, you know, you just don't know. In the minutes before the financial crisis, you know, everyone will remember, oh, I saw signs of this, I predicted this and I predicted that. Not really. And even when it was occurring, people didn't know what they had, you know, there was danger, you know, the subprime mortgage market, a little cul de sac of the mortgage market and then became more of the mortgage market than all of mortgages. And then credit and then beyond credit into all assets. And at every stage no one saw the I said in the book, it's like on the fourth day of the biblical flood. Noah's look, people are looking out the window and saying, my, that's a lot of rain. I hope it clears up tomorrow. And of course, after the by the end of the 30th day, there was more. It wasn't just a lot of rain in a row, but you didn't know that after the fourth day. And by the way, on the 39th day, you didn't know it was gonna end the next day.
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Lionel Barber
Excellent. Simon Williams auditioned for Wonder Man.
- [27:43]
Lloyd Blankfein
I'm gonna need you to sign this. Assuming you don't have superpowers,
- [27:49]
Lionel Barber
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- [27:50]
Lloyd Blankfein
If anyone file now.
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Lionel Barber
Monolips are sealed.
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- [28:04]
Lionel Barber
What lessons in leadership did you draw? And I want to just single out for the listeners that Lloyd produces in Streetwise, a series of internal memos that he sent out. Which voicemails? Voicemails, yes, indeed. Why did you decide to do that and what other broader lessons?
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Lloyd Blankfein
Listen, it was very. I'm smiling now, but you know something? People still have PTSD over what was happening. The financial crisis. And again, at any given moment, you didn't know that there was a moment. There was no timeout like there is at the end of a football game where, you know, at the end of 90 minutes, it's over. You didn't know where it was going to go. And people were, you know, very unnerved, unmoored. It was their job. It was their what, by the way, let's talk about the world. People were really suffering and by the way, continue to suffer afterwards. That's another long topic of conversation about where the consequences of financial crisis were most felt. But within our own organization, we had to get things stabilized in our own thing. You know, when you board an airplane, the flight attendant says, you know, in event of a problem, you know, the oxygen will come down. Put it on your own face before you put it on your children's face, because the children aren't going to be, you know, rescued if you pass out. So you have to make sure that yours is secured and then you can work on that same thing. In our organization, we were there to help our clients, but we weren't in a position to help our clients unless we got stabilized. And a lot of the anxiety and a lot of the fear and a lot of the panic, you could decide debate whether it was warranted or not, but it certainly wasn't helpful. And so I was going about, while all this was going on, trying to doing my job as best as normal. I wasn't canceling meetings, I wasn't canceling trips, I wasn't freaking out. And every day I was sending out voicemails to the thing, alluding to what was going on, alluding to what we were doing, but trying to do it in a reassuring way, saying, I got to France. I met with clients to show an ordinariness, and it was very important that it was voicemail and not just memos. Because I wanted people to hear the tenor of my voice and to be. Not to say, you should be reassured and it is okay, but to demonstrate that I believed it was going to be okay so that they would get it. The important thing was I only needed 2% of the firm to work on Goldman Sachs issues. If everybody in the firm wanted to be helpful to the firm, I needed 98% of the firm to do their jobs, help their clients work to secure and perpetuate Goldman's reputation and provide that service. But what happens in a crisis is everybody is traumatized, staring at the tv, watching their stock ticker. And I needed them to get back to work. And the deal I said to everybody, I said, do your jobs. That's the most helpful thing you could do to your job. The 2% of us that are needed to work out Goldman Sachs has problems, will work on that. And I will communicate with you and tell you what's going on in an honest way. And I did that through those voicemails. And I think it was, you know, it settled people down. No one was happy, but everybody went back to work.
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Lionel Barber
And in my experience in the newsroom, you find out who wilked and who becomes a hero. Was that your experience at the bank?
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Lloyd Blankfein
Oh, my gosh. There were people in our firm, yes. You don't know. You know, there's the old Saul. You can't judge a book by its cover. But we had, by and large, most people were magnificent. I tell you, really good. I went into rooms of people where everybody was, you know, was on it and doing the right thing. And then there was some unpleasant surprises. There were people, and it's funny, though, people who are kind of men's men, great athletes and blah, blah, blah, and strong stalwarts worked out 40 times hours, hours every day. And some people were hyperventilating in a corner. There's a lot of pressure in those days. Hard to think back to it, but you know it, because you reported on it. A lot of pressure. And then there were some people in the firm who didn't look like they could walk up a whole flight of stairs. And they were like. They never went to sleep and they were working like crazy doing things. We had to do things in our own organization. We had to know how much cash we would have 14 days from now if we paid out all the money we were owed. And nobody paid us what was owed to us. We never had to have those system and those technologies. We were never playing it that close to the bone. We never had to make those projections to regulators before. So we had people in technology who did, you know, created software and systems that would have taken a year. And they were doing it in, you know, they were doing it in 30 hours. And so, you know, you really do. You're right 100%, Lionel. You really find out who's who under crisis. And let me tell you, my advice to people going forward is if you want to know how people are going to perform, find people who have gone through crisis in their lives, because that's the only way even they know. And look, I had a talk to the firm during this period and I told people, your reputations are going to be made by how you do in this crisis. And again, when I'm talking to the firm, I'm talking to people who are at Goldman and who want subsequent careers after Goldman. And I said, whatever else you do in your life, your colleagues who are going to go out and also be very important people in this world, maybe at Goldman, maybe at other places, maybe in government, but their memory of you is going to be cemented by how they see you perform in this crisis. So let me tell you, buck up for yourself, but buck up for how you want to be perceived by others.
- [34:01]
Lionel Barber
So, Lloyd, during this period and its aftermath, you had to deal with politicians, you had to deal with regulators, the new Dodd Frank era. And of course you had to deal with the media. What advice do you have for CEOs and corporate leaders in how to handle the media?
- [34:20]
Lloyd Blankfein
Well, a big look. Honesty and transparency is always the watchword. People figure, media figures out everything. Because even if they don't get it on their own, you know, in 40,000, a company of 40,000 people, they'll find 1,000 people willing to talk to them. Even if we, you know, try to bar and, you know, you do your job in the fourth estate, you know, is very important. I found that a mistake that we had made previously that I continue to make is that Goldman Sachs, we're an institutional firm. We didn't deal with consumers or retail. And the other word for consumers and retail are citizens and taxpayers. We had no relationship with the general public. We didn't really think we needed one. We wanted to stay in the background and put our big corporate clients out in front. We didn't have to advertise. We didn't have to connect with the general public. All the people that needed our services knew who we were. Well, then this happens. And those, you know, consumers and retail, they're now citizens and tactics with a lot of influence on Our fate and shame on us. We never went out and communicated what we do, who we were as people, what we were real, you know, what our real goals were as individuals and in a company sense. And when people are pointing fingers, there was not just a fame about Gomez, there was a notoriety, a mystique that wasn't necessarily a positive in the world. At a time when people don't like elites. And I was very suspicious of people self dealing for themselves. We bore the brunt of that attitude, especially at a moment that was very polarizing in terms of where the consequence were falling. And so we found ourselves in a very poor place and having to go out and give interviews under those circumstances, trying to describe ourselves was not really well accepted and was, you know, and came across as very self serving. What we should have done is all along recognize that we were too important, too influential, too big to have been a knot to have earned our anonymity.
- [36:29]
Lionel Barber
Lloyd, I think you gave a nearly perfect answer to my question. You just missed out one thing, which is never, ever make a wisecrack joke in front of a reporter, as you did when you said in passing as you were going away, having talked to the reporter and he asked where you're going. You said, I'm off to do God's work.
- [36:52]
Lloyd Blankfein
And it was very, but you know me and I'm flip. And I joked to you once, I said, you know, before I go to any meeting or any, do any presentation, you know, whoever is with me, any of my handlers said, now remember, Lloyd, whatever you do, don't be yourself. And I tend to be. So this reporter had just talked to me like for a long time and he was, he was doing a big piece on Goldman Sachs and he was waiting in the anteroom as I was leaving for his next interview with another executive at Goldman Sachs. And as I'm walking by, he tried to corral me again. I have a few more questions. I said, you know, I waved my hand and I said, you know something, you've exhausted everything I have to give you. And besides, I'm off to do God's work. And that suddenly got turned into, you know, which was just, you know, funny thing, you know, funny expression and you know, off to do God's work, you know, because, you know, probably was doing something, I was making some sort of speech in front of some sort of, you know, Goldman Sachs is, does a lot of philanthropy in there. But it didn't matter what I was doing. It was a flip expression. And all of a sudden I open up the paper. And it's treated as an ecclesiastical statement that I'm commuting. And I said, oh my goodness. But that goes into what I said before anybody. If I had gone out and anybody who knows me and knows the way I speak and my tendencies would have, or at least should have taken it in that way. But something. People have their jobs. I have my jobs. Sometimes people. The rigorous editing of the FT Prob wouldn't have allowed that. But guess what? I thought that was too good for somebody except for some editor to pass up. And then it got picked up and taken by other people as if I really was touting my personal relationship with the Almighty.
- [38:41]
Lionel Barber
Yeah. So, Lloyd, to wrap up here, you were a crisis manager, a crisis leader. You were a survivor. The bank thrived after getting through the crisis, that brilliant deal with capitalization from Warren Buffett and going forward. And then you had a bout of cancer, which you had to fight through too. So just tell us very briefly about that personal experience. And then maybe there is life after Goldman for you. What, are you upset?
- [39:19]
Lloyd Blankfein
Yeah, so true. I'm still exploring a ladder. Yes. I. Look, I was always in risk management, which is always to worry that very small bad probabilities are gonna happen the next day and to prepare for it and stuff. And it kind of was every, you know, you go for doctor's exams. I was going through, you know, I never focused really on myself, but I started noticing things. I started to cough and I start, you know, I was coughing a little too much and I was sort of tripping going upstairs. I thought my feet were clearing the riser, but it wasn't. And I was walking slowly as I went to the doctor, which by the way, is a very high bar for me to go to the doctor without a specific thing. I said, just, I'm not feeling right. And you know, what I had ultimately was a non Hodgkin's lymphoma. Blood cancer. Relatively not easy to diagnose unless you do imagery. And I got sent back by the first, the first time I went to the doctor, he gave me some cough drops, you know, which was kind of not necessarily going to, you know, that helpful for cancer treatment. But eventually I got the right images taken and I had, you know, again, I had this blood cancer. It was very severe. I'd waited a long time. The doctor by the time I went back in said, if you waited another week, you wouldn't be walking. At that point I was literally, I was actually tripping and falling. And I said, haha. I was Also losing weight, but I was always trying to lose weight. You know, I felt was so successful at losing weight, I started giving other people advice how to lose weight. But it turns out it was all. It was all due to that illness. And I got, with a lot of help. My family was very supportive. Laura was super, who, you know, was super attentive to me. And I got through it. But of course it makes you think about things. And it was a kind of a 50, 50 outcome, kind of a cancer that I had this particular kind of non Hodgkin's lymphoma. I did get through it through great help. And you learn a lot about yourself and you learn a lot about your priorities. I stayed in the firm another three years, but at that point I enjoyed what I did. And I admire the people who do it until they die because they enjoy it and they wouldn't want to do other things. But I was a little bit of an accidental investment banker. I went through liberal arts and law school. I was always interested in history and other things. I wanted to learn stuff. And I thought, you know, I didn't necessarily have another job to go to, but I had another aspect of life to try to live. And it felt at that end of 18, no, the crisis for us was the existential part of the crisis. And then the reputational aftermath. By 18 that had ebbed. The firm was on a high trajectory. I could leave, you know, when things are going poorly, you can't leave. When things are going well, you don't want to leave. But that's when you have to pull the trigger. I didn't want to stay another year and then have another crisis and then find myself staying another seven. So that's when I left. In the aftermath, of course, there's life afterwards. Every once in a while, more than I wish, I find myself missing it. And then I remind myself, you know something? I don't have to get on a plane ride. I don't have to go to Singapore tomorrow or Riyadh. And I don't have to testify in front of a congressional committee. And then I lean back and smile. And so I miss a lot of it. I miss the camaraderie, the shoulder to shoulder. I miss the crises, actually. Not the ones that we were, not the ones that people accuse us of causing, but just the ones that occur regularly in the market when people are wrestling with a naughty problem and you really know who your partners and your allies are. I miss that aspect the most. 10% of the time, 15% of the time, but there's other things in life that are quite enriching. And again, not having the burden of doing a lot of stuff I didn't like in order to do the percentage of stuff that I do like now I could just do stuff I like.
- [43:12]
Lionel Barber
LLOYD I think we've got common ground there. I miss it occasionally.
- [43:17]
Lloyd Blankfein
I miss you in it, Lionel. I do. You know, I think you were, you know, you were grounded in a time when the papers were not always under the same kind of fiscal pressure they're under today, when you really felt only and exclusively a public responsibility. And I think you were the terrific manifestation of that.
- [43:41]
Lionel Barber
Well, I miss it when it's a huge story and everybody knows when they come, like January 6th or Ukraine. But then I remind myself, like you, what it was like being a global editor, having to get on all those planes, all the jet lag and then managing 585.
- [44:02]
Lloyd Blankfein
Right. All of whom think they're the smartest people in the world. And some of them are right. They are. Smartest people are definitely right.
- [44:09]
Lionel Barber
Readers and listeners, here's the book Streetwise by Lloyd Blankfein. It's a really good read. And for anybody who wants to learn about financial history and how to get to the top with modest ambition, this is the book to read. Thank you.
- [44:28]
Lloyd Blankfein
And thank you.
- [44:30]
Mia Sorrenti
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was created in partnership with Guinness Global Investors. It was produced by me, Mia Sorrenti and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For more information on Guinness, just head over to guinnessgi.com or see the link in the episode description. For ad free episodes and full length recordings, you can become a member@intelligencesquared.com and to join us at future live events, you can see our full events program over@intelligencesquared.com attend. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.