Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - Fmr Goldman Sachs CEO: What Surviving The 2008 Financial Crisis Taught Me — Lloyd Blankfein

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

Lloyd Blankfein is one of the most consequential figures in the history of American finance — a kid from the Brooklyn projects who climbed to the top of Goldman Sachs and steered the firm through the worst financial crisis of our lifetime. This is a conversation I've been looking forward to for a long time, so glad to share it with you all on Open Book. Lloyd Blankfein was Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs from 2006 to 2018. I spent the first seven years of my career at Goldman Sachs, and Lloyd was my boss and mentor. He was kind to me then, and he's been kind to me ever since. I greatly admire all he's done for me, and there aren't too many people I admire more than Lloyd. His book — in my opinion — should be considered the business book of the year. Go buy it, you will not regret it! Get a copy of Lloyd's book Streetwise: Getting to and Through Goldman Sachs here: https://amzn.to/4mVo3PJ Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. Pre-order my next book, All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump, out on the 17th of September in the UK and the 22nd of September in the US: ⁠https://www.scaramucci.net/allthewrongmoves Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Call 16-531-2600 or visit conexontario.ca. The world was so vengeful at the financial crisis. They were looking for someone to set an example, and it wasn't going to be Bear Stearns and Lehman and Merrill that didn't exist anymore, and it wasn't going to be the big banks. It was going to be Goldman. People, you know, went after us, which meant going after me, and when I went through a long Senate hearing that lasted hours into midnight,

and I was giving interviews after that till two in the morning after that and taking a car back to New York, that certainly wasn't fun. But again, I had the perspective. I knew at the end of the day we did stuff right. People were clamoring for something. I didn't feel super exposed in any fairness sense, but I was tortured. The Senate after that hearing,

because they didn't get the satisfaction of showing that we were purposely trying to kill the market to make money, which of course we weren't. The committee chairman put out a referral to the Justice Department to investigate me for criminality. I didn't even know what the crime was, but the FBI, complying as it is,

did an investigation. I would get picked up, brought to the Southern District Office, interviewed with a court stenographer. That happened like three or four times. And, you know, your mind kind of says, whoa, some 34-year-old assistant attorney general could ask for a grand jury and do something. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining me today is Lloyd Blankfine.

He is the former chairman of CEO, Goldman Sachs, from 2006 to 2018. And he's the author of a book that I think should be the business. book of the year. I don't know if the F.T. would qualify for that because it is a memoir as well, but to me it is a strategy manual for dealing with life. It's a write-a-passage story, but also in here is how to manage a company going through a crisis. And, Lloyd, by the way, it took me back, Memory Lane. I left Goldman Sachs 30 years ago, hard to believe. But I was there for the first seven years of my career. And you were very nice to me then, and you've been very nice to me. now. So it's great to have you on. But again, I love this book. And it starts in East New York, Brooklyn.

I want you to take us back there if you can talk a little bit about the precrocious nature of your childhood, but also you were growing up in public housing. So take us there because it's just an unbelievable, wonderful American story arc, Lloyd, of your career. Well, you know, I did grow up in public housing. My dad was a, worked in the post office as a mail store. Actually, he had been, I remember, earliest memories, bouts of unemployment with my dad on happiness around the table. He got a job at the post office, civil service.

He took the night shift because it paid an extra 10 percent, night differential. And so, unfortunately, growing up, my dad worked nights. I think he had also part of the time, a part-time job during the day. So I really wish I had remembered more conversations with him than I do. But we grew up in that circumstance, but by the way, so did everybody around us. And so part of the genius of America is that probably that 85% of the country thinks they're in the middle class, believes they're in the middle class or practical purposes, given the minimum standard of living that we have, are in kind of a middle of middle class. So I didn't know that we were, that I didn't know what there was necessary to strive for, but I did know that I didn't like growing up in the projects, going to the high school

that I went to in the neighborhood I lived in, in the neighborhood I traveled to. So I was very, very anxious to, at it from a very early age, leave and go to an out-of-town school. That was my big objective as a kid growing up. I have so many things that I've underlined in this book, and there are personalities in this book that I remember from the firm that stayed at the firm with you and helped you manage the firm. But the best line, I told my producers this,

the best line in this book is on page 21, Louis Blank Fine. It's the top of the page, and you write, and it's a very brief line, you write at Harvard, comma, I was short. And I'm thinking you're writing about me, Lori Blankfine, but no, what did you mean by that sentence? At Harvard, I was short. You know, I hadn't gotten around much. Again, I went to, again, again, I didn't travel much.

I didn't get out much. I was, you know, basically living, you know, in the projects with a lot of kids that were like me. And guess what? I think I've never seen the sociological study. And, you know, I don't know whether it's the effects of malnutrition or just eating a lot of fatty foods or whatever. but I wasn't short where I was growing up. And then when I got to college, like the first day, I'm walking with some of the people from my floor.

We're going to walking to the dynamo. And I looked to the left. I looked to the right. And I felt like a valley between two mountains. And I said, boy, you guys are tall. You guys are tall. And they looked at me and he said, no, we're not tall. You're short.

And I looked around and I said, you know, gosh, you're right. and it was the first time I thought of it. So I guess I didn't suffer from a bad ego at that point because I thought of myself, I thought of myself bigger than I was. Well, see, I identify with you in so many ways in the book because I thought that we were well to do in a weird way. And when I got the Tufts, and I saw these kids riding around in BMWs,

I'm like, okay, I'm short, Lloyd, but I'm also not rich. I mean, it was a combination of those two things. But we didn't have, you know, I read your story, too. You know, we didn't have, again, it's not the same, but it rhymes. You know, both, you know, Italian household, Jewish household, you know, striving, very, you know, very working class of parents. And, you know, somehow we made it, punched above our weight and made it to fancy school. You and I both went to Harvard Law School. Who would believe that for either one of us at this point?

No way. No one would have lived. Especially from my Nate Road or your neighbor. You know, we ended up in, you know, ended up in Goldman. You went the entrepreneur. route and I you know I stuck it out in the uh climbing the greasy pole at Goldman Sachs. You but also you write about that Goldman was the right place for you and I and I appreciate it because one of my law school classmates, uh, I don't know if you would remember Jeff Moslow.

He was on the bank he was on the banking side. He was well suited to be a Goldman Sachs partner and he did the same. He took your career track. It just for me, I always wanted to have my own business. That was one of my career dreams. And so, uh, we pursue the past. that we pursue and like takes us where it goes. But there's something in the book I was dying to ask you about because threaded throughout this book, Lloyd, is you're coming into every room and the question is whether you are an establishment guy, Lloyd Blank Fine, or are you a kid from East New York? And the question I was dying to ask you was how much of your career was actually using that tension as a competitive edge versus just surviving it and it being a right of

passage for you. Well, I got to tell you, it's not optional. It's not as if it's a calculation. So it's all of my career. You are who you are. You get stamped. When I first started writing the book and I started it and then I stopped for a while, I got out, you know, 64 when I started it. And I realized I left home. I left East New York when I was 16 and I went to the hallowed halls of Harvard, which of course was huge culture shock. But the point was I did get away. But that 16 was exactly a quarter of my life and I was sort of ruminating on how you get stamped in your early life.

And you never shake it. You can lean towards it. You can lean against it. But you're never going to shake it. You are, you know, it's Papa. That's a quote, that great philosopher, Papa, I am what I am what I am. Booboo. You know.

And so I'm always, I always, I'm going to hear my self-speak. I'm going to hear my Brooklyn accent. I'm going to say, I'm going to try hard to say rather, as opposed to rather, or sister instead of sister. And so I'm always, I'm always conscious. So you're always both. At some point, you just go with it and decide that although you're lucky for it. because there are burdens to every position, but there are advantages to every position. Well, there's also an empathy.

I mean, it made you a better leave. I mean, when I read your book, I see a person that has gone through every segment of the society economically. And for me, the book reads very empathetically about your colleagues, and it reads very empathetically about the role that you had. You know, I think you did a great job of remembering where you came from, but also recognizing where you had gotten to. But there's always that tension. And so that's something. Yeah, I think that that's what I always try to impress upon people is people grew through Goldman Sachs is think about who was in your position when you were striving and going up and you become that person. Do you realize that you could put a name on it?

Like the first time I realized I had a job that that Bob Rubin had when I first got to the firm. You know, Bob Rubin, who was then Treasury Secretary was co-cared of the firm for a while. And I said, my God, when Bob Rubin walked in. into a room I used to, you know, I used to, you know, shake. And now I'm that person. You have to realize how people look you. When you grow up like us, stepping out of yourself and seeing yourself in the room and being self-critical, by the way, you know, is unavoidable.

Often it's really good. But sometimes it gets in your way too because you end up second-gassing yourself. you end up not living in the moment sometimes, you end up walking out of a room and, you know, magnifying, you know, magnifying, you know, the things you would or could or should have done differently because you always grow up with that perspective on yourself, but in other ways it's hugely helpful to be able to put yourself

in other people's shoes, but sometimes you wish you could turn that on and off. And so the answer is, I don't know whether I'm the kid from Brooklyn and I was the CEO of a very establishment, very influential firm. And they, you know, and I'm, you know, they got me for that job.

I'm both. Thank you for tuning in an open book. And if you haven't already, please hit the subscribe button below so that you're the first to know when our new episodes drop each week. We've got a lot more coming. And now back to the show.

Yeah. But I mean, listen, you know, I bought, I mean, you know, probably shouldn't gush this much. I'm supposed to be this objective journalist on these podcasts. But I was like, you know, I love the book so much that I bought 100 copies. Every one of my summer interns, we hire 20 people for the summer. I try to help these kids out from school. They'll get a copy of the book.

They'll have to discuss it with me. I gave it to every person at my firm, Skybridge. I almost said Goldman because I'm thinking about Goldman. And I've given it to a lot of my friends to read. There's just so many touching stories in the book. I want to go to one that really moved me as well. Your mom made you rotate the rug so it wouldn't wear unevenly, right? So you know I identify with that because as an Italian in that community, Lloyd, we had rubber runners.

You may have remembered those if you walked into an Italian apartment. My mother and my nana, they had plastic over the upholstery. Of course, we did too. and they had rubber runners going down the thing. On a summer's day, how was it coming in from outside? Oh, my God. When your house is in air condition, it's 97 degrees, and you sit down on a plastic, you know, wrapped in plastic,

by the way, and, you know, the sad thing is, of course, none of it didn't have made any sense, because when my parents finally moved away down, they moved to Boker, Yoka, number four, whatever development, you know, they got in west, west, west, west, Palm Beach. The furniture was like pristine.

It was like still in the wrapper. But, you know, again, we're talking about these things, and it's not really the whole point of things. But I'm still that way. I still, somebody gives me a new sweater. I don't want to wear it until it's all, until it's sat in my draw for about eight years and is out of style because I just didn't want to get anything new dirty. So, but I not only identify with that, I think it also affected me in terms of

my risk taking on Wall Street. Sure. I've done well, but I've been a pretty good risk avoider on certain things. I think it has to do with my upbringing. I guess my question to you about this is what did that teach you about risk growing up like that, rotating the rug? You know, I always had, again, I don't know what it stems from, and I don't know if there's a linkage in this. I'm not, I don't have my degree in psychology or, you know. But I definitely saw the always worried about the darker side of things, how things would go, looking around corner.

It's a, again, it's something that I wish I could turn on and off because sometimes the clouds what otherwise should be an unabashedly, you know, unambivalently happy moment because I'll say, I'll start to think what could go wrong, what could take it away. It helped you in the 2008. Yes, I mean, look, like anything else. things are, you know, things have a, things are positive and things have a dark side, you know, taken too far. But I always, again, had a bit of a, you know, what could go wrong with this? And actually, I found, look, in going to Goldman and going, you know, coming up the trading side, I found something that really suited my ADD. You know, I was very, very good, intense focus, but you asked me to work on a project straight through for, you know, three days. and I was good for, I could get, for me, getting five hours worth of work done was usually

working for two hours and procrastinating for three and I'd get five hours worth of work done because I was very intense in the two hours and very, you know, procrastinating and fidgety during the other three hours in order to make the other two hours work. But I did come from a, you know, place where I got used to looking around corners and seeing, you know, and always thinking that low probability, risks are much higher probability than you think. And starting to think that, you know, even as a trade, you know, I always divided the trading job that I had in two separate distinct parts. One is, what do you think is going to happen and getting yourself there? So in other

words, trying to guess the future. And the other part of it was risk management, where we go at different times and say, okay, now we're in risk management mode. I don't care what you think is going to I don't care that you're lined up consistent with those views. I want to know anything you can think might happen and what you're doing to what you're doing to contingency plan for it, mitigate the consequences, it, try to avoid the bad consequence. What are you doing about something? No matter if you could think and conceive that it could happen, tell me now what you're going to do about it or what you're doing already to mitigate. the consequences. And that's risk management goes. I remember going around a room, you know, at various financial crises that we've had, I said, okay, we're in risk management mode. And somebody will say, well, I think, and I go, I don't care what you think. And then that person would say, oh, if you don't care what I think, they'll tell me what you think. And I said, I don't care what I think. I just want to know what's in the realm of the possible and what we're

going to do if that happens. And if you do a good job at that, when things, Things happen as they did in the global financial crisis and in the dot-com bubble and long-term capital. And, you know, we had the crisis of the century like every four or five years. When you do good contingency planning, you get off the mark so quickly when something adverse happens that people think you anticipated, that you guessed it. And, no, you were just a very, very, very good reactor. So, again, two different modes.

You know, we were big risk takers. We try to get the market right. But sometimes when things we didn't understand what was going on, we'd go into risk management mode, try to get closer to home and try to think of all the things that could affect our balance sheet. And our balance sheet was huge. So nothing could happen anywhere in the world that didn't affect us. And by the way, about 90% of the time, they accused us of causing it anyway. Well, yeah, that's another part of the book. but I want to go to something that, and this could be hey, geographic on my part, by the way,

because I left Goldman with very good feelings about the firm. Some of the partners actually helped me, like Mark Winkleman and David George and others, helped me get my firm started when I launched it. I was actually a private banker for John Weinberg, and I celebrated my birthday with him. I was born on January 6th. I used to go with Jack Shepherd, We'll be taking you down Emory Lane.

I used to go with Jack Shepard to the Four Seasons Grill Room. John had an office on the 10th floor. You guys had a satellite. When he retired, I used to go out to lunch with him like once a quarter. I just did it, you know, for, you know, in appreciation after he long retired. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so I was his banker.

So I went to see him regularly, probably, I would say six times a year, but specifically for his birthday, me and Jack Shepard, his old roommate from Princeton, who fought in the Second World War with him. We would sit in the grill room together. And he was the culture carrier extraordinaire. As you and I both remember, the legendary John Weinberg. And one of the things he said to me, Lloyd, which is so evident in this book, is that some people grow, other people swell.

Remember him saying that, Lloyd? Yeah, I do. You remember I'm saying that? Lloyd, I'm going to say the sentence, and you finish the sentence, trees don't. Obviously, they don't grow to the sky. They don't grow to the sky. That's cliche, yes. This is the stuff that you and I grew up with at the firm, and it's imbued in your book.

And I want to talk about the culture of the firm. You're embracing it from East New York. Let's just face it, you're not establishmentarian, but there's something warm and embracing about this culture that you ride to the top job. Look, I loved, I think. So talk about that if you don't mind. Yeah, in a way, it was because I didn't grow up in it. You know, I kind of came in through the back door.

I applied, you know, I practiced law for a while. I applied to Wall Street like everyone does after four or five years. You go get a different job when you're in a law firm because it's so, such a miserable life being a lawyer and a junior lawyer in a law firm. I didn't get a job at any of the big firms, including Goldman. I got a job at Jay Aaron & Company, which was acquired by Goldman, which is how I got in through the back. And that was a small commodity trading firm. And I grew up through the then commodity division and, you know, started to creating more responsibilities, you know, and trading and sales as it went on.

But because I was an outsider and because I was always felt a little bit out of things, you know, when I got to. to college. Other kids had gone to prep school. I went to, you know, failed high school in East New York. I was always a little bit remote. I didn't dress it. I didn't go, you know, I didn't have the same life experiences that other people had at that point. I didn't track. I was always a little bit out of it. And when I got to a great institution that I could do well, and I, you know, I just hugged it because I just really, for the first time, I felt really grounded and had a great platform and was part of a great team. Whereas before that, I was just felt more of an outsider.

Now, I could tell you, the culture of Goldman Sachs is very strong. And I think, by the way, one of the great achievements of Goldman Sachs has been maintaining that culture that I started with when the firm was a partnership. And you started with as well and kept that partnership ownership culture this more than a quarter of a century after the firm has gone public. And that is a great kind of achievement. And it has consequence. Now, what's the culture? It really is a partnership, an ownership culture. It's like the people you work with are your calling,

and technically they were. That's what a partnership is. You're not just looking. The senior partner is not just looking at his subordinates. He's looking at the ownership of the company. And as owners, they feel entitled to information, to know what's going on in the whole firm, not just their cylinder.

If you work at Amazon in the retail part of the firm, you're not really asking a lot of questions or getting a lot of information about AWS part of the firm, a cloud part of the firm. But at Goldman, everyone felt they were tied. The compensation was tied to how the firm is a whole functioned. You got more information. You had expectations that you'd be consulted on things. If you're running, if you're the senior partner, you have to socialize the things you want to do. And you get pushback. And guess what? You sometimes go five rounds with people. and you know, you may change your mind or you may not change your mind and you may slow it because you think the organization can't take it. In a public company, you know, it's more of a chain

of command, response, obedience, the buck, and it's, and the people don't, you know, don't owner it. And so there's real consequences in terms of your feeling. If you're a junior person in the firm, you come away with a sense of ownership. And if you're, running the firm, you have to respond to people as if you're there by the consent of the other owners, which in a partnership you are. And so the firm kept that ferocity and had the discipline at the senior most level, Hank, me, my successor, David, to run the firm that way. It's a lot easier to say this is the way we're going to do it. It's a lot harder when you have to, you feel the need to build consensus with people who are entitled to question.

you and second guess you, but at the end of the day, you get a more stable, you know, I think it's a difference like between the American military command structure and the Soviet. You don't just push it, you know, people in the field are expected to think, to have ownership, to have rules of, you know, the rules of war that, you know, transcend, you know, other things that you may be told from time to time. So I think that made for a strong affirm. And it was certainly something that I appreciate it. And by the way, one of the cultural things of Goldman, which you're an example of, is the firm always stay close to its alumni, made an effort to, so that people, you're out 30 years. And if you're describing yourself to someone, at or near the top of your

list is your ex-Goldman. So you're at the firm seven years, gone 30, and you still partially identify as Goldman. And the firm works at that. You're between, you're, between, you're, times when great people, I'm sure people didn't want you to leave and you go, oh my God, my heart's breaking. This guy is leaving. I'm mad on this. Go into a room, count to a hundred, come back out and wish in person luck and say, what can we do to help you? Well, I got a tremendous amount of help from my colleagues at Goldman, some former partners, current partners, etc. And I always have a warm spot for Goldman. I would say this to you. When I left, my father, who was a crane operator, was very nervous for me.

And he was like, you're leaving this big company and you're going to start a company based on this PowerPoint presentation. I mean, I said, well, no, Dad, I learned a lot from that firm. I'm going to use a lot of their practices, a lot of their compliance practices, all these different things, which, frankly, we still use today. But I was going with the culture for another reason, Lloyd, because, you know, we're getting up there, you and me. process matters, doesn't it?

Because I do find that the people that stick to process do better than the people that are lone wolf operators. Am I wrong? You know, it's like anything else. You could find examples on both sides of the ledger. If you live in Silicon Valley and, you know, you'd rather, you know, you'd rather apologize and get approval and things don't always, you know, you may not, you know, you could see people have evolved a whole ethic and a sense of, um, of, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, you'd rather.

you know, management style by issuing process. Now, that may work. And by the way, you hear about the success stories. You don't hear about the other 99 that crash and burn. Right. But in a place like Goldman, which is very big and very consequential and a big balance sheet, where if you make a mistake, and by the way, this has come up a number of times, where your big balance sheet, which is levered and you make wrong judgments, you can, you know,

you could do damage to the economic system, to the markets as a whole. And so we found out, and I found out, this found out in 1994 when the firm had very little process that, you know, we're so proud of our non-bureaucracy, but I think we've taken that pride to an excess. And let's get a little bit more regular surveillance on what we're doing. Let's have a different set of people look at what risk takers are doing because you can, you can. can get loopy and go off in the wrong direction and not get reeled back in, let's have some more process. And so after the crisis of 1994, again, there's a crisis all the time. In 1994, if you recall, you won't, you know, a lot of you guys sold a piece of the business of the command of trust.

I was there when we went through that crisis and I was told, you know, I was in PCS at that time. So I was on a salary. I was on sort of a dwarf. Oh, just to say what happened. That's when the Europeans raised interest rates by 6%, not six basis points, 600 basis points. David Ashton, you remember the whole? In a few months, and everyone thought they weren't. And so guess what? When you lower interest rates, asset prices swell in value. When you raise interest rates, they contract in value.

And like physics, like relativity. Yeah, Dr. Buffett said interest rates are the physical gravity of assets, right? That's what they are. And so it was a shock. and we were not in great shape. And guess what? You discovered the riskiness of what we had, which didn't feel that risky even when things were going well,

but when they were going poorly because they suddenly felt a lot riskier. And that was when we put in, after that, we put in a regular risk committee that met, that went over stuff again, trying to walk the line between not being an entrepreneurial risk-taking enterprise, but having some surveillance,

that we could rely on to let us avoid, you know, that which an extra set of eyes could prevent. Well, listen, there's so much to talk about. Unfortunately, I have a 30-minute podcast, but I want to just say a few things about the book because I read it and then I went back and I've underlined a lot of it, by the way. And I'd love to probably have lunch with you at some point and really talk about it. But the thing that I really got from the book was your self-awareness. And to me, you wrote about yourself in a very vulnerable way, not just your upbringing, sir, but your time as the manager, if you will, the CEO going through a financial crisis at a time where you and many other CEOs were the poster boy for some negativity in the

press. And by the way, I have been there, Lloyd. You know, I've been, I've had my face exed out on the front of the New York Post as a member of the Trump survivor. You don't even want to get my ass fired after a minute. Oh my God. I have a whole series. Somebody made a whole billboard for me of my caricatures in the New York Post. And you know, and the headline, the label of it was the daily tabloid. Right. Exactly. And I've had, you know, listen, I've had myself in a Bitcoin boat sinking from the New York Post. My head is seven times the size of my body. Think of all the jealous people who don't get as much attention as we did. Well, okay, yeah, you could say that, but there's something revealing about what you're

right. If the time that it's happening, there's some pain in it, though, isn't it? And there's some self-reflection. Well, anxiety. I mean, again, this is a short part, you know, this is a short talk. It's the longer. But, you know, the world was so vengeful at the financial crisis. They were looking for someone to set an example.

And it wasn't going to be Bear Stearns and Lehman and Merrill that didn't exist anymore. and it wasn't going to be the big banks that lost $60 billion. They didn't look like, but it was going to be Goldman that did relatively well in the finger, didn't lose money in the financial crisis, not because we knew what was going on, but because we ran a much more hedged, sensible book. But people, you know, went after us,

which meant going after me, and I knew what my role was, you know, I had to play, you know, my role. And I actually, and I talked. about this in the book. I'm not sure how it wasn't a secret, but I don't think people were as focused on it as I was. But when I went through a long Senate hearing that lasted hours into midnight, and I was giving interviews after that till two in the morning after that and taking a car back to New York and, you know, we, that was, you know, that certainly, you know,

wasn't fun. But I, but again, I had the perspective. I knew at the end of the day we did stuff right. People were clamoring for something. I didn't feel super exposed in any fairness sense, but I was tortured. You know, again, the Senate after that hearing, because they didn't get the satisfaction of showing that we were purposely trying to kill the market to make money, which of course we, you know, we weren't. And everybody really understood that. It's super hard to do that, as you and I both know the market. Of course.

And everybody understood that we were buffeted by the same forces as everybody. else, they actually, the committee chairman, put out a referral like to the Justice Department to investigate me for criminality. I didn't even know what the crime was, potentially was giving bad testimony and a hearing. But the FBI, compliant as it is, did an investigation. I would get picked up and brought to the Southern District office, interviewed with a court stenographer. That happened like three or four times. And, you know, your mind kind of says, whoa, I know I'm fine. I know there's nothing to it, but, you know, some 34-year-old assistant, you know, assistant attorney general could ask, you know, could ask for a grand jury and do something.

It didn't happen that way, but it could have. That certainly, you know, that certainly gets you to focus. Well, listen, I have a lot of empathy for it because I've been in those situations as a public figure and in the world of politics. People probably wouldn't realize this, but, you know, in some ways, I'm your doppelganger. I took a different, We were bad and did sort of a entrepreneurs route from Harvard Law School, and you did the corporate route. But we were all in the financial markets. We overlap.

I mean, we knew what each other was doing at the whole time. No, but I mean, my point is that there's some vicariousness to your career that I really do enjoy, and I think you came out in the book. You know, I admire what you've done with your career, but I also admire your thought process because it comes from your life experience. And so I want to go to that because in the middle of all this, you've got to beat lymphoma. And, you know, some of my friends have had lymphoma. It's a tough, tough disease.

I don't know if you remember Mort Lacker. He was actually a very close friend. Yeah, they're different kinds. Like I had non-ha, blah, blah, blah. Yes, it was, it's so funny because, you know, this goes back to my segment that I always had a fatalist streak. So I'm always, you know, you get your annual physical. In this particular one was out of cycle. because, you know, I was feeling off.

And then I was feeling more off. And then I'm walking, you know, and I noticed I went to the dog, was coughing, went to the doctor, and he gave me, you know, throat lozenges for my cough. And I left. And it was still not, and for me to go to a doctor other than for my regularly schedule, it was a big deal, went back in,

and I got a chest x-ray which showed nothing. And I'm going and I'm walking with friends. And I said, you know, similar to, you guys are walking. They said, no, you're walking slow. And then at home I was, I lived in a split level house and when I walked up the stairs, I was falling, walking up because I wasn't clearing the riser. And eventually I went back in, got a CAT scan and then that lit up like a Christmas tree and I had, you know, it's blood cancer, a million tumors, but they're all blood cancer tumors in different places in your body. And I had to deal with that. And when I started, that was kind of a 50-50 outcome.

So, you know, talk about risk management. You're lying in bed. And I had my treatment was every, you know, six three-week cycles where I had four days, 96 hours of a chemo flowing, you know, flowing in. And then the balance of the three weeks, the other 17 days kind of recovering from the treatment. And, you know, it worked out. But it does make you thoughtful about certain things. I didn't quit my job after that.

I, you know, stayed another three, you know, three or more years after that. But it does. It, it, it, it, that's another thing in life, which has benefits and, obviously, you didn't want to volunteer for that and you didn't want to take the risk. But given how things worked out, you're an improved, you turn out to be better for the experience because, you know, the book, the book, the book reads like that. This book reads like a psychologically minded, empathetic person that's been through a lot. And one of the things I wrote in the back of your book that I wanted to ask you, which I'm now going to ask you, is I have my own answer to this, by the way, and I'll share mine, but I want to hear yours first.

What's the actual skill of surviving at the top that people underestimate? me. I think communication showing who you are, you know, and wrapped up in communication. There's authenticity, who you are, not pretending. That was my answer. I can be humble because I feel humble. I said, you know, maybe if I were, you know, if I had your head of hair and I was six foot four, it would be harder to be humble. But it got, you know, being a short, you know. I have six foot four, but that's my width. Yes, yes. That's the problem. It's not my eye. Being a good communicator and And certainly during the financial crisis and all the other crises, I got on a voicemail every day. By the way, voicemail, not email, because I wanted people to hear my voice and know what was behind it.

And I said, people, guys, in these difficult times, we need you to do your jobs better than you've ever done before. We don't need you wringing your hand, staring at the TV screen, worried about your share price, need you doing your job. So our reputation is enhanced during this difficult period. and in return for it, I'll keep you up to speed with what's going on in the firm. And every day I sent a... And it's in the... They aged well. I have the voicemails.

I kept going on with my normal job. I traveled. You know, the problems of the firm traveled with me if I was getting off in France or in China. I could work just as well. The phones worked just as easily from there. And I kept communicating with people constantly. And it turns out the more... The quieter you are, when people don't know what's going on,

that's when fear takes over. And if you communicate and people are on board with you, it just made for more resilience. So I'd say communication. Resilience. I always liked is an important character. It's because over your life cycle, things are going to go wrong periodically.

Everyone in poker over a lifetime of playing gets the same hands statistically. It's just who plays them better. And so I'd say that that's a very important. important thing. I'd say reading history teaches you resilience because you know we go through cycles and the highs, at the highs, you have to bring people down to reality. But by the way, at the lows, you also have upside down bubbles where people get too negative and you know it's going to sort out. And then trying to convince people that their reputations are going to be made in these difficult

times so they should act well because their colleagues are going to be very important 20 years from now, even when you're a junior person, you're the cohort that's going to run the world, and your reputation with these people are going to be formed and impossible to change because of what you do today in these difficult times. So, you know, I'd say authenticity, openness, a real conviction that you're not the smartest guy in the room, especially at Goldman Sachs. You know, you weren't the, you know, to be run Goldman Sachs, you have no prayer of being the best at anything. You're just a guy who's good enough to corral the people who are good to work for the

platform and not kill each other. And, you know, it's so well says. I would have said the authenticity, you've fleshed it out more fully than me, but I really feel that I've survived most of my pitfalls and, frankly, a lot of my errands, you know, errors and mistakes by just being authentic and getting up in the morning and keep going. I mean, and exactly. And that's something you had to do after the crisis. So I have a part of the podcast where we take five words from the book and then we have a Roshaw test with the author. Okay, I picked out five words of my producer. But before I get there, somebody told me over the weekend that one of your kids is getting married.

I think you've got a kid that just got engaged. Yeah, my second son just got engaged. Okay, good. So Mazel Toff on that. Thank you. But if you had a grand kid, and I'm talking 50 years from now, so it's a, it's a, it's in a grand kid. And I already have four for my older kid. Okay, so there you go.

I only have one producing well so far, but it's a gusher. All right, all right. Well, there, there you go. The goal is always to get these kids off our balance sheets, although somehow I feel. No, no, no. I like them on my balance sheet where I can control, where I have some influence. There you go. See, now you've spoken like an Italian grandmother.

Exactly. That's, that's a, you spoke like an Italian. I mean grandmother, and that's... We're all Mediterranean people. I don't think we're that. You got that right. But the grandkid, I'm talking 50 years ago. It could be one of the four you have now or one in the future.

And you said they had to read one chapter of this book. Which one would you want it to be? Well, I wanted to read the early chapter because I'd want them to know where I came from at some point when they're interested and get sentimental about their past and want to know where they derive from. And I wish, you know, my dad died, my parent, both my parents died something like 35 years ago. And I never really, I was not deep into adulthood when they passed away. And, you know, at the time of my young adulthood, I was interested in myself. Now, I wish they were around now because I'd like to talk to him now more than I wanted to talk to him then in some ways.

Of course. That's what happens to us, though. And that's what happens to me. And that'll happen to my kids and grandkids too. And that was what I really thought of. When I wrote the book, I didn't know that it would get published. I was writing, you know, because it was such a formidable undertaking for me. I couldn't have conceived of it.

But I incommitted my way to a book by first saying, you know, I'm going to write the story that I'd like my kids to read when I'm not in a position to respond. I mean, that's why it reads so well. And that's why the book is so compelling. We both know who Sidney Weinberg was the father of John Weinberg. Of course, he was shining shoes for people in the 1920s. He goes on to become the chairman of Goldman. So you have the quintessential American dream story, but you also have the pathos story in there where it's a very human story.

And that's the chapters that I would have picked. All right. So we're down to the five words, Lloyd. I'm going to say the word. You're going to give me like a two-sentence reaction to the word. Okay. We took a little bit about this already, but let's go to the two words, Wall Street. I say Wall Street, you say what?

Well, I don't have a great connotation about, you know, when I think about finance and what we do, I think about being the invisible hand that matches people who have capital with the people who need capital. And I've absorbed the pejorative that, oh, gosh, Wall Street is kind of menacing. On the other hand, when I think of what Wall Street does, you know, people get a butterfly net if I think there's some nobility to it. but I really do think it's hugely valuable because Wall Street creates the efficient markets that allows capital to find a good home, which is why U.S. leads in innovation. And it's also ruthless in the way that mistakes get corrected quicker here. In China, you build a building or an airport in the wrong place.

It will stay there forever. Who the heck is going to say you made a mistake? But here, you build an airport in the wrong place. the bank repossesses it, feeds it they'll get paid, they pave it over and they build a Walmart. Next. You know,

and so that's why our economy does well. And I think the crux of it, the fulcrum of the lever, is what Wall Street does. That's interesting. I took it more personal. When I hear the war, Wall Street, I think it's my,

it was my yellow brick road. You know, it was my real aspirational opportunity. But you're right. It is ultimately the arterial flow of the capital and it can be ruthless in terms of the, the way it gets... It's the invisible hand that people talk about,

the capture of the animal spirit. Frankly, I think it plays a big role in being for America to be able to afford its greatness. I'm not going to say it's the source of greatness, but without the wealth creation, without the innovation, the jobs, the growth, really how great would we be? We agree.

And it's very well connected in the mainstream more so than the average American things. The second word, Lloyd, I say the word risk. you say what? Well, in a word of us, I should say, you know, anxiety. But I think for me, risk, the sense that merely follows, what do you want to do? So in other words, to me, risk in of itself is not something to eschew.

It's just, are you coping with it better than others? Have you, are you getting compensated well for taking it? Are you helping people by allowing them to shed their risk? You know, Ford wants to make cars that doesn't want to speculate an aluminum or currency, but it has to get rid of those risks if it wants to really focus on making cars. We'll take on that risk and manage that risk. So to me, risk is almost like a law of conservation of risk. The world is a risky place.

It's just a question of who is taking it on? Would we be able to ship things if there wasn't marine insurance? Would we be able to build things if there wasn't homeowner? Would people be able to walk? How much extra savings would people have to have if they couldn't buy life insurance? In a way, we are in the insurance business because we take on other people's risk. And that, I think, is also a very, very important purpose. Aside from capital formation, we are the responsible party that can not.

manage and take on other people's risk. Okay, I love it. The title of the book, which I love the title of this book, by the way, streetwise. So I guess the question, how'd you come up with that title? Well, it was, you know, wisdom and streety and kind of merging it. So it's a little bit of a play on Wall Street. It's smarter than Street Smart. If you're Street Wise, you're smarter than just Street Smart.

Well, Wise has a different, Wise has a kind of a knowing, kind of, you know, stroking your chin kind of, you know, that, you know, it's more of an embedded thing. And wisdom is, who knows for the title? I love the title. Maybe wisdom is smart, tempered by time. Okay. And experience.

All right. So I love the title. Okay. I'm going to say 2008. And you're going to say what? 2008. Huge crisis. The best part of my career in a lot of ways, because it was the time when.

you could have risen to the occasion, you could rise to the occasion or you could have not. And I feel like I left it on the field. I did the best I could. If it had worked out badly, I wouldn't feel as sunny about it even if I had tried my best, but we got through it. So that was the existential part of the crisis that we did better than anybody else. And in fact, we did well. And it was an inspiration to a lot of people in the firm. for a long time that we managed that because we went into 2008 as the big risk takers that you know

we are and yet we managed to get ourselves, you know, we didn't recognize what would happen, but we recognized that stuff was happening. And so we did what our good risk taker will take when you don't really understand what's happening and you can't relate to it. We got closer to home and brought our risk down very aggressive, almost like a plane that's flying at 30,000 feet, develops a pressure issue, and does a crash dive down to 10,000 feet. That's kind of what we did. And so, you know, I feel looking back at it, I felt that that's the time where I made the biggest difference. We the firm made no money. We were flat in that year, and it was the best year I had. You know, we made lots of record revenue years and earnings years, but I felt the best about a year

that we were flat. I have to insert some of my editorial comment theory here, if you don't mind. When I wrote to you, I wrote to you halfway through the book, I sent you an email. I said, I'm loving your book. I got to get to the back half of the book. And I said to myself, the best part of this book is over. Because to me, it was your right of passage story. You're getting to Harvard and doing all the different things you did to get the Donovan Leisure,

getting to Goldman Sachs and trying to find your way through Jay Aaron, et cetera. The work ethic, the relationship you have with your wife. which was well rendered in the first couple of chapters. Yeah, she was tough, tougher than me. She made me... I met your wife in the lobby once at, like, the Peninsula Hotel. No, once I was going into the building, there was a crowd protesting from the building. The driver said, should we go in through the garage and skip the front?

And I said, yes, let's do that. And when she turned around, she turned to me. We sat in the back of the car with me. He said, we are not going in through the garage. Man up. All right, all right, well, there you go. See that? So, well, her first impression, I met her in the...

the lobby at the Prince Hotel in LA, one Oscar weekend. I liked her then. I like her more now. But that was a great part of the book. But it's a very close tie, the 2008 stuff, Lloyd, because it is a crisis management manual. The reason why I tell people, you know, it's only April, but in this book was written and launched in March.

I know what's the best business book of the year? I say it's blankfine streetwise because in here, here is the manual for crisis management. And you said it better than I could say it. Crisis management, you don't know what the F is going to happen. Okay. And you write about it in that way. And I give you a lot of credit for it.

Okay. So you're going to get the last word. And I'm going to give you the last word. And the last word is blank find. So I say the word blankfine. You say what? You know, I still, blankfine still has to work some things out. I still don't always know the effect.

I'm getting a lot of, I feel the validation of people liking the book and everything. And it was a mystery to me. Believe me, it was like nervous hitting send. And I got to, you know, you don't shake yourself. I'm still that 16 year old kid going to meet his roommates. Amen. Yeah, he's prep school roommates when he came from a, you know, high school and he got, you know, low boards, you know, low verbal scores because he'd never read a book in New York City schools.

So, you know, still, you know, still, uh, still working through. still working through stuff, just like everybody else. And I don't feel bad about it. Trust me. I'm just me. I'm still working through stuff too, as it should be. You know, I admire the people. I've met people who seem to me to have been voted most likely to succeed in every class

they were in starting in kindergarten. I wasn't that guy. I bet you weren't that guy. We came to it late. I wasn't that guy. It wasn't until I got. You know, I had high test scores. I got myself into Tufts, and my parents didn't have the money for it.

My guidance counselor insisted that I go. I owe him a great debt because it was the right decision. It ultimately led me into Harvard Law School in my career orc. But I had to get my, you know, what, together in high school once I realized how daunting it would be to go to that college. But you've written an awesome book. I congratulate you on it. The title of the book is Streetwise, Getting to and Through Goldman's End. by Lloyd Blankvine.

It'll be one of the industry classics, Lloyd. And I really commend you for writing it. And I hope that you'll consider writing a corollary or second passage. Well, that's another problem. I better do something so I can write about it because nobody's going to want to write. You know, I'm not going to write about my experience chatting all day. Well, there's a lot for you to write about, sir. But thank you.

Anthony. You've been a good, we've been friends for a very long time. You know, watched it. than, you know, you're self-deprecating a lot, you know, when in fact you've been, you know, quite accomplished. So anyway, I appreciate you and I appreciate the friendship. Well, me, me too. Honestly, giving you a hug through the TV here. But thank you. And guys, thank you for joining us. And ladies and gentlemen, Lori Blankfly.