big question and to answer the question and get behind the goldman curtain i am now joined by stephen mandas a former goldman employee and author of the new book what happened to goldman sachs . steve benen thank you i want to start off by asking you about some of the meat of the book you talk about the organizational driftin you say it occurred to goldman sachs' what are some concrete examples of this organizational drift and its consequences for the company. will give you an example in terms of a story in the late one nine hundred eighty s. goldman was taking a british company public and they had an opportunity to get out of taking the company public and saving themselves hundreds of millions of dollars they had a legal contractual right and when they were presented with the opportunity to do so john weinberg who was co-writing the firm at the time said i don't care what the contract says we are not we're going to fulfil our duty we're told we're going to do it we're going to stand behind it even if the contract legally allows us to get out of it today when you look at goldman executives w

big question and to answer the question and get behind the goldman curtain i am now joined by stephen mandas a former goldman employee and author of the new book what happened to goldman sachs . steve benen thank you i want to start off by asking you about some of the meat of the book you talk about the organizational driftin you say it occurred to goldman sachs what are some concrete examples of this organizational drift and its consequences for the company. will give you an example in terms of a story in the late one nine hundred eighty s. goldman was taking a british company public and they had an opportunity to get out of taking the company public and saving themselves hundreds of millions of dollars they had a legal contractual right and when they were presented with the opportunity to do so john weinberg who was co-writing the firm at the time said i don't care what the contract says we are not we're going to fulfil our duty we're told we're going to do it we're going to stand behind it even if the contract legally allows us to get out of it today when you look at goldman executives wh