You’d think five years of being protested, vilified, burned in effigy, berated by Congress, and compared to blood-sucking cephalopods would break a man. That being called to court to testify not once but twice in civil trials against corrupt managers at the firm he oversees might rob him of whatever shred of joie de vivre he had left.
Not so for Lloyd Blankfein, a man who finds the silver lining on every cloud and a rainbow after every storm.
During his testimony in the trial of Goldman Sachs managing director Rajat Gupta last year, court artist Elizabeth Williams found the Goldman Sachs CEO hard to draw, she tells the Times, because he “never stopped moving.” He smiled, joked, and played with a rubber band like it was the most fascinating thing that the Sharper Image ever invented. But it was “during a long sidebar,” the artist reports, that Blankfein really carped the diem:
When the lawyers were conferring with the judge, he turned to the microphone. He tapped it a little, then he tapped it some more before finally, in one dramatic gesture, he pulled off the foam cover, releasing a sudden “whoam!” The room went silent.
That’s why they pay him the big bucks.
