Did Goldman Rig Vote on UK “Robin Hood Tax”?
By Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism
The latest “Goldman [appears to be] behaving badly” incident reflects either uncommon boneheadedness (the only question is whether by an employee or the firm itself) or a very clever ruse to further discredit the reputation-challenged bank.
Well-known British film director/producer/screenwriter Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, for instance) and actor Bill Nightly started a campaign for a Tobin tax on banks, which they rebranded as a “Robin Hood tax”. In addition to securing the support from a variety of organizations, they launched a video and an internet poll to show that the public would favor the idea.
At 3:41 PM, “no” votes spiked suddenly, rising from 1400 to 6000 in less than twenty minutes, which. The site’s technical staff tightened security, investigated, and determined that nearly all the votes in the surge period came from two computers….and as the Times Online explains:
one privately-owned and hard to trace, the other, it is claimed, registered to a computer at Goldman Sachs…
Internet experts said that the act was sabotage, as the culprit would have to create a special computer program in order to register so many votes in such a short space of time. They also said it was possible, though unlikely, that the campaign had fallen victim to an elaborate hoax, as it is possible to mask the true IP address and make it seem as though a hacker came from elsewhere.
Yves here. Now of course, assuming this cute move originated from Goldman or its staff, it has backfired impressively. It has not only garnered more free press for a idea that the banking industry is not keen about, but (yet again) features Goldman in an unfavorable light.
And before you say, “Goldman isn’t THAT stupid, this had to have been an employee with lousy judgment,” it is still remotely possible that this ploy did have someone in the officialdom backing it.
Consider the case of Christian Curry. Curry was an analyst in Morgan Stanley’s real estate department. He was fired almost immediately after nude photos of him appeared in a gay magazine, although when Curry sued for wrongful termination, Morgan claimed he had engaged in expense account fraud (I dimly recall the particulars, and even at that stage, Morgan Stanley was already looking inept. Curry said the firm was contesting him having been reimbursed for visits to strip clubs. Curry said it was on client business and that sort of thing was routine at Morgan Stanley. Oh, and before readers wonder why a young staffer would be charging client-related entertainment to his company, it’s part of the culture at most firms that the most junior person picks up the tab for wining and dining, to relieve the senior person of the nuisance of submitting the paperwork. If I were Morgan Stanley, I would not give someone cause to do discovery on whether other staffers had been reimbursed for expenses at adult entertainment venues).
Then the dispute took a bizarre twist.
