In a commencement address to graduating students of LaGuardia Community College, Mr. Blankfein drew on his own journey – from a housing project in Brooklyn to the top of one of Wall Street's mightiest firms – to offer life advice.
But as investors tried to comprehend the abrupt downfall of two of Wall Street's mightiest firms — Lehman Brothers, which spiraled into bankruptcy, and Merrill Lynch, which rushed into the arms of Bank of America — even optimists said the immediate future would be difficult.
Some day a break-up of this too-mighty firm will again have to be considered.
The mighty firm need not care much about what the wider public thinks: after all, it does not serve moms and pops.
No fictional financial landscape would be complete without a surrogate for Goldman Sachs, and "A Fatal Debt" has one in Rosenthal & Company, a mighty firm that's the envy of Wall Street.
The once mighty firm, in danger of running out of cash by early next year, is using 2010 astrology to argue for a $25 billion government loan (for Ford and Chrysler, too) to survive the downturn.
But after the financial crisis, when derivatives nearly caused the downfall of once-mighty firms like the American International Group, lawmakers and regulators moved to keep a closer eye on the industry.
His work addresses the question, "What sort of regulations and competition policy do you want in place so that large and mighty firms will act in society's best interest?" said Tore Ellingsen, chair of the prize committee, in an interview following the announcement in Stockholm.
"What sort of regulations and competition policy do you want in place so that large and mighty firms will act in society's best interest?" Until the 1980s, regulation researchers sought simple rules that could apply to every industry and dealt essentially with two extreme situations: single monopolies or perfect competition.
The Volcker Rule, for example, means that today the mightiest trading firm, Goldman Sachs, is effectively blocked from proprietary trading.
