No one would mistake them for typical Goldman Sachs clients. Marcus Moore runs a staffing firm. Jessica Johnson-Cope places security guards and rents out drug-sniffing dogs. J.R. Foster helps companies maintain their offices and buildings.
Yet just last week, those three and thousands of other small business owners descended on the Washington Hilton to celebrate America’s little guy -- and perhaps surprisingly, mighty Goldman Sachs Group Inc. too. The gathering capped a $500 million effort to burnish the bank’s reputation, on Main Street as well as in Washington, after the financial collapse of 2008.
It seems to be working -- at least judging by the crowd at the Hilton. For what amounts to less than 0.2 percent of its revenue over the past decade, Goldman has bought a lot of goodwill. The nine-year-long campaign underscores the myriad ways Wall Street has moved to influence public opinion -- and Washington policy -- since the dark days of the financial crisis.
“I know a lot of people say they want it for PR,” said Moore, the head of a Burbank, California-based search and payroll-services provider and a graduate of the program. “It’s not really my job to determine why you do what you do. I just care that as much good, or more good, is going to come from it than what we’ve had previously. Regardless of their rationale for doing it, they deserve some credit.”
‘Government Sachs’
Goldman Sachs used to settle for having its executives run the world. For decades, the firm’s alumni showed off an almost magical ability to end up in key posts -- leading central banks and the U.S. Treasury, sitting in Congress or crafting White House policy. The pattern, continuing into President Donald Trump’s administration, has earned it the nickname “Government Sachs.”
But in the wake of the crisis, Goldman learned such influence also has limits. As the public hunted for scapegoats, the firm quickly found it had little connection to the masses. After 150 years devoted to institutional clients and with no branch footprint, much of America didn’t know or didn’t trust the firm. A Rolling Stone essay portraying the investment bank as a “vampire squid” jamming its blood funnel into anything that smelled like money soon lodged itself firmly in the public’s imagination.
So in 2009, Goldman Sachs, facing blowback over the almost $17 billion it set aside for employee compensation, launched the 10,000 Small Businesses program. It pledged $300 million for financing to small firms through community lenders, and another $200 million for training and education. More than 6,700 entrepreneurs have since passed through the program.
It capped off that progress with last week’s event, which it called the largest-ever gathering of small business owners in the nation’s capital. It was an evangelical-like revival that showed the lengths the firm will go for positive publicity.
Hilton Scene
Travelers coming into Washington’s 110-year-old transit hub, Union Station, arrived to see a pop-up market featuring program alumni like McClure’s Pickles and Well Read Inc. in booths under a banner proclaiming Goldman Sachs’s small business credentials.
Graduates -- more than 2,200 in all -- congregated at one of Washington’s most storied hotels (known among locals as the Hinckley Hilton after John Hinckley Jr. shot Ronald Reagan there in 1981), with some paying $100 for rooms with a king-sized bed and a mini-fridge in a bank-reserved block that would have otherwise cost $389. Goldman negotiated discounts for at least three other hotels around town too. A soul band greeted attendees the first day, belting out tunes like James Brown’s “Living in America,” with the lyrics changed to “10KSB in America!”