Marketplace Scratch Pad

Guess who?

Scott Jagow Nov 17, 2009

A large company and a billionaire investor are reportedly launching an initiative to help small businesses across the country. I’ll give you one guess who I’m talking about…

Do the initials GS and WB ring a bell?

Bloomberg says Goldman Sachs and Warren Buffett are teaming up to help 10,000 small businesses. That help would include money and business counseling. From the article:

Goldman Sachs, the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, is trying to dispel criticism from lawmakers and pundits who portray the company as the greedy face of a financial industry whose excessive risk-taking fueled the credit crisis. Unlike competitors that make home loans and provide small business credit lines, more than 90 percent of Goldman Sachs’s pretax earnings this year came from trading and principal investments.

Perhaps you put Buffett and GS into separate categories, but Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, is the largest shareholder of Goldman Sachs.

Bloomberg says Goldman has put a bug in the president’s ear that it will be coming to the rescue of small biz, which is supposedly one of Obama’s top economic priorities.

You can’t look a gift horse – er, vampire squid – in the mouth, can you?

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