I was fascinated by this February 2026 NYTimes interview by Andrew Ross Sorkin of Lloyd Blankfein, former C.E.O. of Goldman Sachs. It really validates the misguided intentions of Neoliberalism. Let’s look at how Bill Clinton’s deregulation of the banks affected the nation’s economy.

I think if every bank had managed its risk the way we did, we wouldn’t have had a banking crisis.

“Going into the 2008 financial crisis, I thought I was cynical about politics. It turned out that I wasn’t cynical enough,”

Lloyd B described himself as grounded in the old partnership model where the partners were investing their own money. “I was a very risk-oriented, risk manager guy.” Looking back, he considers the financial crisis as a gift. “If I had had perfect knowledge, I would have gone out and shorted every security instead of being flat.”

His successor is the first C.E.O. that was never a partner of Goldman Sachs. “He’s rooted in a public world, and is doing things […] that our owners, which are the public shareholders, want him to do and are probably benefiting from. He’s completing the orientation of Goldman Sachs as a public company.”

“A major factor in the erosion of the fairness of our society was a feeling that the well-to-do got bailed out and the receptionist that put down payments on three apartments didn’t.” He balanced the greed of the receptionist with three apartments with the greed of the bank making the loans, pointing out that the central bank doesn’t lend to people or institutions; it lends to banks. “A recession that is also a banking crisis is a much more difficult thing to sort out.”

After Covid, Recovery Has Been K-Shaped