You would think that after you give away $200,000 to the Weill-Cornell Medical Center and $2 million to Harvard and $850,000 to the Robin Hood Foundation the response would be something like, “Go, you!” or “Nicely done, Lloyd.” But no. Instead, everyone points out that giving money to your alma mater is not charity, especially if your two sons will eventually go there, and then Bloomberg goes and juxtaposes the millions and millions of dollars you have raked in as the CEO of Goldman Sachs over the past ten years with the comparatively paltry amount given away by your charitable foundation, based on your tax returns alone, not counting whatever donations you may have made personally, and then to add insult to injury measures your goodness against the goodness of other philanthropists in the field of finance.
Peter Firestein, president of Global Strategic Communications in New York, which advises companies on image issues, said the Blankfein foundation’s giving would be “more impressive” if it had taken the “initiative to accomplish something” significant. He notes that junk-bond pioneer Michael Milken’s foundation has raised more than $200 million for cancer research and funds several education and scholarship programs.
Mike Milken! So now the CEO of Goldman Sachs isn’t as good as the guy who was barred from the industry for securities fraud! Amazing. Who else is really doing God’s work?
“Sandy Weill has given $100 million gifts to Weill Cornell Medical College, and he’s given credit for saving Carnegie Hall,” Firestein said about the Citigroup Inc. chairman emeritus. “Milken and Weill not only wrote checks but they conceived and advanced specific initiatives with their energy and influence. So perhaps something like this lies in Lloyd Blankfein’s future.”
SANDY WEILL. ARE YOU KIDDING. The guy who built Citigroup into a monster that might have toppled the economy if not for government intervention? Yes! Congratulations to him for reappropriating the exorbitant fees the bank charges their customers so that he could go to the opera! Lloyd is having heart palpitations. He’ll be in his office with the smelling salts.
Blankfein Foundation Pumps $11 Million Into Harvard, Robin Hood [Bloomberg]
