Consider two institutions. One has a long and storied history, a critical player in global finance, its decisions and policies impacting its own economy and those of other countries. The other is the Bank of England – which has just hired Huw Pill, an alumnus of the first, Goldman Sachs.
Goldmanites of the financial kind – unlike the yellow-green vanadium analogue of andradite garnet that shares their name and which is found in just a handful of metamorphosed deposits around the word – seem to be everywhere.
It’s hardly surprising. Running the world after acting like you run the world (or is it the other way around?) seems like a natural story arc. There appear to be few places safe from the tentacles of an enterprising squid, particularly the vampire kind.
The corridors of US power, inevitably, have long echoed with the voices of Goldman. Hank Paulson, Robert Rubin and Steven Mnuchin were Treasury secretaries. Bill Dudley used to run the New York Fed. Gary Cohn was president Trump’s chief economic adviser for as long as he could stand it, which wasn’t long.
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