Goldman Sachs Sorry About 2008, Needs Closure Before Moving Forward
NEW YORK — Goldman Sachs Group Inc. issued a formal apology Thursday for its role in the 2008 global financial crisis, a statement the firm said was motivated by a sincere desire to take accountability and by the practical need to clear outstanding moral liabilities ahead of what internal planning documents describe as "the next significant market event."
The apology, delivered in a 14-page press release and simultaneously filed as an exhibit to Goldman's most recent 10-K, acknowledged the firm's role in packaging and selling mortgage-backed securities it knew to be of poor quality, its practice of simultaneously betting against those same securities through credit default swaps, and several other activities that Goldman said it "regrets, in retrospect, somewhat."
"We are sorry," said Chief Executive David Harmon in a statement. "For the families who lost homes, for the workers who lost jobs, for the communities that spent years rebuilding — we hear you. We see you. We are committed to being the kind of institution that acknowledges, in a legally non-specific way, that the 2008 financial crisis occurred and that Goldman Sachs was a financial institution that was operating at the time."
A spokesperson clarified that the apology was not an admission of liability.
"The apology is a values statement," she said. "It reflects where we are as a firm today and where we aspire to be, which is slightly to the left of where we were in 2007."
The statement comes 17 years after the financial crisis, a timeline Goldman framed not as delay but as appropriate deliberation.
"These things take time," said Patricia Leung, Goldman's Head of Institutional Values and Cultural Positioning, in a call with analysts. "We wanted to make sure that when we apologized, we were doing it right. We were doing it at the right moment, with the right words, in the right regulatory environment."
When an analyst asked what had changed in the regulatory environment, Ms. Leung said the firm was "encouraged by the current posture."
Goldman's internal timeline for the apology, portions of which were shared with reporters under a confidentiality agreement that has since lapsed, shows the firm began considering an apology in 2011 but paused after concluding the optics were "premature." A second review was initiated in 2017 and suspended following an internal analysis that found an apology might invite further regulatory scrutiny. A third review, begun in 2023, concluded that sufficient time had passed for an apology to be received as "statesman-like rather than defensive."
A fourth consideration, noted in the timeline but not elaborated upon, was described as "pipeline management."
It is this fourth consideration that has drawn the most attention.
Sources familiar with Goldman's internal planning — three former partners, a current associate who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, and a mid-level compliance officer who said he was "just done" — said the apology was timed in part to coincide with preparation for what senior leadership has been calling "Horizon Event Two" in internal communications.
The phrase refers, these sources said, to a projected period of significant market volatility expected to arise from a confluence of commercial real estate exposure, regional bank instability, and what one planning document described as "the usual levers."
"The thinking is that you can't really lead into a new thing with the old thing still open," one source said. "It's like a sequels problem. You've got to resolve the first movie before you can open the second one."
Goldman disputed the characterization.
"The apology is entirely sincere and entirely unrelated to any prospective business activity," Ms. Leung said. "We resent the implication that our remorse has a strategic dimension."
When asked whether Goldman had any prospective business activity that might benefit from a cleared moral ledger, she said the firm did not comment on forward-looking statements of that nature.
The apology has received mixed reception from economists, former regulators, and approximately four people who still own the houses they almost lost in 2009.
"It's a nice gesture," said Dr. Miriam Attah, a former Federal Reserve economist and current fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. "It would have been a nicer gesture in 2009, when people were still in their houses. Or in 2010. Or 2015. At this point it's a little like receiving a get-well card from someone who gave you food poisoning and is holding a fork."
She noted that Goldman paid $5.06 billion in a 2016 settlement with the Justice Department over its mortgage practices, a figure that represented approximately nine weeks of the firm's revenue at the time.
"They did eventually pay a penalty," she said. "I'm just saying that penalty and this apology are both things that happened, and neither of them is the same as accountability."
Goldman's press release addresses this distinction directly, noting that the firm "does not view accountability and apology as mutually exclusive" and "considers both to be part of the Goldman commitment to stakeholder responsibility."
Former SEC enforcement attorney Richard Castor said the apology was "legally inert."
"It says nothing actionable," he said. "It admits nothing. It's a paragraph that sounds like an apology if you're reading quickly. I've read it four times and I still can't find the part where they did anything wrong. It's impressive, honestly. This is the work of very skilled people."
Internally, Goldman's apology has been received with some bewilderment.
Three current employees, reached by phone, said they had heard about the apology through news alerts rather than internal communication.
"I got a Google News notification," said one associate, who asked not to be named. "It was before my morning standup. I didn't know what to do with it."
A managing director in the structured products division said he had been told by his supervisor that the apology "doesn't affect our pipeline."
"Which is true," he added. "It doesn't."
Goldman said it plans to host a listening session for affected community members next quarter. The session will be by invitation only, invitations will be distributed through existing client relationship channels, and the firm acknowledged, when pressed, that it did not currently have client relationships with the communities most affected by the 2008 crisis.
"We're working on that," Ms. Leung said.
She was then asked whether Goldman was also working on Horizon Event Two.
"We're always working," she said. "That's what Goldman does."
The firm's stock rose 2.4 percent on the day of the apology.
— IRREVERENT NEWZ — GENERAL DESK
IRREVERENT Magazine is a work of satire and parody. All quotes, scenarios, and attributed statements in this article are fictional. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is a real company. The 2008 financial crisis was a real event. The apology described in this article is not real, though we acknowledge it is also not entirely implausible.