Goldman Sachs' Neediest Cases
In advance of Goldman Sachs' anticipated gargantuan charitable donation calculated to mask the stench of its taxpayer-financed cash bonanza, CityFile rummaged through the past recipients of Goldman's largesse. Guess what they found? Tony, preposterously expensive private prep schools, that's what!
It's not entirely fair to cherry-pick the recipients of Goldman's past donations looking for examples of the company underwriting elite institutions that buttress the hyper-wealthy bubble culture that company thrives in, all in the name of "charity." So we'll point out that Goldman's assorted foundations have also given generously to genuinely needy causes like the Harvard Varsity Club, Camp Morasha, and Brown University. OK, ok—Goldman has also donated money to breast cancer research, after-school programs, and all sorts of good things that deserve its money.
But they also gave $210,000 to Rumson Country Day School in Rumson, N.J., a private school so desperately in need of money for the purposes of charging $20,000 per year to educate eighth-graders that Bruce Springsteen played a fundraiser for it in 2002.
And then there's $68,000 to the Lawrenceville School, a boarding school near Princeton, N.J. with an 800-acre campus and a 200-year history of taking disadvantaged kids like Tinsley Mortimer, Michael Eisner, and Prince Turki bin Faisal al-Saud and instilling them with the values of hard work and self-reliance that Goldmanites endeavor to live every day.
Or Greenwich Country Day School, which lifts children out of poverty by charging their parents $29,000 for "Grade IX," according to the school's tuition schedule. It was no doubt cheaper when George H.W. Bush went there.
Not all of Goldman's educational grants go to prep schools, of course. There are also the firm's Walter F. Blaine and H.R. Young Scholarship Programs, which award $4,000 and $7,500 scholarships, respectively, to the children of Goldman Sachs employees. Yes, Goldman Sachs has janitors and secretaries, so we imagine they employ people who could make justifiable use of such scholarships. Then again, they pay some secretaries $200,000 a year, and we'd hope that any firm that intends to pay out $23 billion to 31,000 employees this year would find a way to distribute it such that none of them need help putting their kids through college. We'd be wrong!
If you know how Goldman employees will be spending their taxpayer-financed bonuses this year, let us know—you can e-mail us at the address below or post to the #goldmanproject page.