The Brothers Blankfein
According to Business Insider, Lloyd Blankfein's son Jonathan is about to land a job he totally earned at Goldman Sachs. And we hear that his brother Alex is also on the Goldman Sachs payroll. Bootstraps!
Jonathan Blankfein, who Business Insider hears is just "a stand-up guy," graduates from Harvard this year, at which point he'll join Goldman Sachs, which is father Lloyd runs, as an analyst. His senior thesis sounds right up Daddy's alley: "The Origins of the Safety Fund System, 1829-37: Prudent Innovation or Political Maneuvering?" The safety fund system, of course, is the predecessor to the FDIC: A mandatory fund that banks had to contribute to in order to cover their depositors if they went under, so that no one bank became too big to fail. Where have we heard that one before? We are very curious to know whether efforts to reign in banking behemoths to prevent them from holding the federal government hostage and requiring multi-billion-dollar bailouts when they take cosmically stupid risks constitute "prudent innovation" or "political maneuvering." If anyone out there comes across young Jonathan's thesis, please let us know.
Meanwhile, a tipster tells us that Alex Blankfein, who graduated from Harvard in 2008, is also working for Daddy at Goldman Sachs, though in what capacity isn't clear. Here's a picture of Alex (at left), um, kickin' it with Josh Kushner — brother of Jared and part owner of the New York Observer — that we ran in 2006.
Young Jonathan interned for Goldman Sachs prior to his hire. Twice, in fact—he started in the summer of 2008 and was called back in the summer of 2009, an honor we hear is relatively rare in the Goldman Sachs internship program. And he wasn't treated like just any old coffee-fetcher: "He was given a seat in the center of the energy trading desk," our tipster reports, "which was in the center of the commodities trading floor. All the other interns were put in a remote corner of the floor."
One of Jonathan's fellow interns last summer, by the way, was none other than Jordan Viniar, son of Goldman CFO David Viniar. We're sure Jordan was a motivated little worker, since to judge by these old notices of insider trades, "The Jordan Viniar Trust" owns some Goldman stock. At least it did in 2005 and 2006, when it sold $1.2 million worth.
Nepotism is a grand old tradition at Goldman Sachs. The company likes to pride itself on the story of Sidney Weinberg, who rose from a $3-a-week janitor's assistant job at the firm to become CEO by 1930, when he saved it from bankruptcy and shepherded Goldman into the modern era. The fact that his son John L. Weinberg ended up taking the mantle from him doesn't quite fit that rags-to-riches narrative, nor does the fact that his grandson John S. Weinberg is currently a vice chairman.
Anyway, unemployment is still at 10%, so work hard for whatever jobs are out there, kids!