#473 — Money, Power, and Moral Failure
4/29/202622 min
Sam Harris speaks with Lloyd Blankfein about finance, politics, and the state of American society. They discuss Blankfein's memoir, Goldman Sachs and its role as a market maker, the 2007-2008 financial crisis, the AI investment bubble, wealth inequality and the rise of trillionaires, the crisis of antisemitism on the left and right, Trump-era corruption and the post-truth political environment, the national debt, and other topics.
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First 90 secondsSam Harris· Host0:00
[gentle music] You're listening to Making Sense with Sam Harris. This is the free version of the podcast, so you'll only hear the first part of today's conversation. If you want the full episode, and every episode, you can subscribe at samharris.org. There are no ads on this show. It runs entirely on subscriber support. If you enjoy what we're doing here and find it valuable, please consider subscribing today. I'm here with Lloyd Blankfein. Lloyd, thanks for joining me on the podcast.
Lloyd Blankfein· Guest0:28
Oh, thanks for having me, Sam.
Sam Harris· Host0:29
So you, you've written a memoir, uh, Street Wise, which, uh, is incredibly fun to read and, uh, an education for anyone who doesn't know much about finance and, um, I'm just... I'm gonna ask you some questions about it. I mean, I, I, especially am interested to understand the lessons we should have drawn from the two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight financial crisis, which you, uh, steered Goldman Sachs through, um, which was, uh, high stress and high stakes and, um, an achievement for which you were both celebrated and vilified. So yeah, I mean, you, you have a, a very interesting story because you came up from, I mean, you're, you were a Jew living in the projects. I mean, this is not a story that's often told about Jews these days- Yes ... coming from basically nothing and- We, we forgot to socially mobilize. Yeah. Yeah. [laughs] But you're, uh, you, you, you know, went to Harvard and then kinda climbed your way through all these, uh, you know, all the high status rungs on the ladder and eventually were running, um, one of the most storied financial institutions in the world and through periods of great stress, and you did that for twelve