“For the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10)

When Greg Smith publicly resigned from Goldman Sachs with a letter in the NY Times on March 14, 2012 he mentioned how callous and money-hungry the company has become. He added new words to our lexicon as he detailed how company executives called clients ”Muppets” and were told to “hunt elephants.”

After twelve years with the company Greg Smith, a Goldman Sachs executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa left with his own elephant guns blazing, stating that the company had become selfish and no longer cared for the best interests of the clients.

He said, “It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.”

Even in my own small way, working with my own clients, I can testify to the truth of this statement. As well as what he said below.

He said, “Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.”

The negative publicity and the accusations of “selfishness” in senior management coincide with the transit of Saturn square natal Sun of the Goldman Sachs incorporation chart. A transit of Saturn square the natal Sun of a company chart may point to criticism to those in authority, which Greg Smith certainly offered.

Click on chart to enlarge.

But, as pointed out last April in an article posted right here  when Goldman Sachs was sued, the progressed chart has a long term Saturn square to the Earth/Moon that makes ambition for material gain to the exclusion of all else the focal point of the company. Without principles a company cannot succeed and no matter how much money employees make, they will eventually bite the hand that feeds them if that company is unscrupulous and callous to the needs of the clients.

Greg Smith may have burned his bridges on Wall Street, (one comment from another executive said that Greg Smith may need to enter the witness protection program) but he brought home exactly what astrology tells us.