An insightful and devastating account of how Wall Street lost its way from an insider who
experienced the culture of Goldman Sachs first-hand. On March 14 2012 more than three
million people read Greg Smith's bombshell Op-Ed in the New York Times titled "Why I Am Leaving
Goldman Sachs." The column immediately went viral became a worldwide trending topic on Twitter
and drew passionate responses from former Fed chairman Paul Volcker legendary General Electric
CEO Jack Welch and New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg. Mostly though it hit a nerve among
the general public who question the role of Wall Street in society -- and the callous
"take-the-money-and-run" mentality that brought the world economy to its knees a few short
years ago. Smith now picks up where his Op-Ed left off. His story begins in the summer of
2000 when an idealistic 21-year-old arrives as an intern at Goldman Sachs and learns about the
firm's Business Principle #1: Our clients' interests always come first. This remains Smith's
mantra as he rises from intern to analyst to sales trader with clients controlling assets of
more than a trillion dollars. From the shenanigans of his summer internship during the
technology bubble to Las Vegas hot tubs and the excesses of the real estate boom from the
career lifeline he received from an NFL Hall of Famer during the bear market to the day Warren
Buffett came to save Goldman Sachs from extinction-Smith will take the reader on his personal
journey through the firm and bring us inside the world's most powerful bank. Smith describes
in page-turning detail how the most storied investment bank on Wall Street went from taking
iconic companies like Ford Sears and Microsoft public to becoming a "vampire squid" that
referred to its clients as "muppets" and paid the government a record half-billion dollars to
settle SEC charges. He shows the evolution of Wall Street into an industry riddled with
conflicts of interest and a profit-at-all-costs mentality: a perfectly rigged game at the
expense of the economy and the society at large. After conversations with nine Goldman Sachs
partners over a twelve-month period proved fruitless Smith came to believe that the only way
the system would ever change was for an insider to finally speak out publicly. He walked away
from his career and took matters into his own hands. This is his story.
