Goldman Sachs Looks From the Outside In

In general, people seem to underestimate the power of good public relations. Except Goldman Sachs, that is. The troubled financier is reported to have hired an outside public relations firm to help pick the pieces of their shattered image up from off the floor.

So, who is the lucky firm to have scored such a major account? Though we played it a bit fast-and-loose with the word “lucky,” the PR firm hired to handle it all is a Texas-based firm called Public Strategies. Hmm, why does that name sound so familiar? Oh yeah, it is the same firm headed by Dan Bartlett, former advisor to George W. Bush and Karl Rove. And we all know what happened with those two.

To sort of rush things along, Goldman already issued its clients a questionnaire asking them to compare the bank to its competitors JP Morgan, UBS, and Barclays. The votes have yet to appear, but boy are we anxious to see the results (as we’re sure everyone else is).

All that can be said at this point is, “Gosh, they’re brave.” But with Goldman being labeled, among many other obscenities, a “great vampire squid,” they need all the help they can get.

Despite the massive backlash for their role in the Greek debt crisis, their allocation of bailout money, and many other scandals to which we have barely touched upon, Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein still supports Goldman’s chief spokesman Daniel Van Praag, though no one is really sure why.  But hey, it’s all about “perception in the marketplace,” as The New York Post called it.