After the Financial Crisis, Wall Street Turned to Charity—and Avoided Justice

At 5:47 p.m. on November 18, 2007, Lucas van Praag sent a mildly concerned e-mail to six colleagues in the leadership of Goldman Sachs. Van Praag was the firm’s liaison to the press, and he had word of a coming story, a New York Times piece on the firm’s role in the mortgage disaster—the same disaster that would, by the following September, precipitate the global financial crisis that erupted ten years ago this week. In the careful corporate way, the e-mail’s only “to” recipient was the chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein (putting others at that tier might have given Blankfein an excuse not to read it); the five other senior leaders of the firm were carbon copied. “Jenny Anderson and Landon Thomas’ story about how we dodged the mortgage mess is scheduled to run tomorrow,” van Praag wrote. “At this stage, 95% certain to be on the front page.” He warned that the “story will, of course, have ‘balance’ (ie stuff we don’t like).”

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