Former Exec Blasts Goldman Sachs

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html

"To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for."

One of the major criticisms that was leveled at investment banks in The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report is that they were taking investment positions in opposition to what they were recommending for a number of their clients. There was an accusation that they foisted investment products off on investors who they knew were credulous enough to just take whatever the banks offered them.

From pages 235 and 236 of the Report:

It was becoming harder to find buyers for these securities. Back in October, Goldman Sachs traders had complained that they were being asked to "distribute junk that nobody was dumb enough to take the first time around." Despite the first of Goldman's business principles--that "our clients' interests always come first"--documents indicate that the firm targeted less-sophisticated customers in its efforts to reduce subprime exposure. In a December 28 email discussing a list of customers to target for the year, Goldman's Fabrice Tourre, then a vice president on the structured product correlation trading desk, said to "focus efforts" on "buy and hold rating-based buyers" rather than "sophisticated hedge funds" that "will be on the same side of the trade as we will."

Goldman denies that it did anything of the sort.