Banksters With Guns Now. Day-um What a Country.

by: Tom B

Tue Dec 01, 2009 at 19:12:08 PM CST

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Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- "I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit," said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.

I called Goldman Sachs spokesman Lucas van Praag to ask whether it's true that Goldman partners feel they need handguns to protect themselves from the angry proletariat. He didn't call me back. The New York Police Department has told me that "as a preliminary matter" it believes some of the bankers I inquired about do have pistol permits. The NYPD also said it will be a while before it can name names.

While we wait, Goldman has wrapped itself in the flag of Warren Buffett, with whom it will jointly donate $500 million, part of an effort to burnish its image -- and gain new Goldman clients. Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein also reversed himself after having previously called Goldman's greed "God's work" and apologized earlier this month for having participated in things that were "clearly wrong."

Has it really come to this? Imagine what emotions must be billowing through the halls of Goldman Sachs to provoke the firm into an apology. Talk that Goldman bankers might have armed themselves in self-defense would sound ludicrous, were it not so apt a metaphor for the way that the most successful people on Wall Street have become a target for public rage.

And while nobody is any more enraged at Gold in Sacks on a daily basis  than yours truly I find the notion of confronting an armed money nerd so ludicrous I couldn't even work up my usual ration of outrage from snickering at the images it conjured up of some pencil necked little bankster geek being rushed to the nearest medical facility to have his hog leg surgically removed from his rectal orifice.

The lady who wrote the article obviously caught the humor aspect of the whole thing too as you can see at the link.