Bailout

Rant of the day: Taibbi on Blankfein

By Felix Salmon

Remember Lloyd Blankfein’s kindasorta apology for his role in the financial crisis? It went like this:

While we regret that we participated in the market euphoria and failed to raise a responsible voice, we are proud of the way our firm managed the risk it assumed on behalf of our client before and during the financial crisis.

Matt Taibbi is, I think it’s fair to say, unimpressed.

Has an act of contrition ever in history been more worthless and insincere? Even Gary Ridgway did a better job of sounding genuinely sorry at his sentencing hearing ? and he was a guy who had sex with dead prostitutes because it was cheaper than paying live ones.

Generally speaking, when one apologizes for having done a bad thing (like for instance destroying the world economy), it is good form to wait at least until the end of the sentence to start bragging again.

Taibbi’s promising much more of this in Rolling Stone next week: it should be fun.

Full post as published by Macroprudential on June 18, 2009 (boomark / email).