Lloyd Blankfein in Conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin — Streetwise
Former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein discusses his memoir Streetwise with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin at 92NY, covering Wall Street, leadership, and risk.
Why we picked this
Sorkin is one of the few interviewers who can keep a Goldman CEO honest in real time — expect the questions Blankfein doesn't get on CNBC.
Lloyd Blankfein led Goldman Sachs through the 2008 financial crisis, navigated congressional hearings, and ran the firm for twelve years — longer than almost any major Wall Street CEO of his era. His memoir “Streetwise” covers the arc from his childhood in a South Bronx housing project to the top of global finance, which is a genuinely unusual biography by the standards of the industry. The book’s value depends on how candidly it engages with the harder questions: what Goldman’s role in the crisis actually was, how he made decisions under conditions of systemic risk, and what he thinks the financial system owes the people it affects.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is well-positioned to press on those questions. His book “Too Big to Fail” remains the definitive account of the 2008 crisis, and he has spent years interviewing the major figures of finance in ways that go beyond the promotional. As co-anchor of CNBC’s Squawk Box and founder of DealBook, he understands both the industry’s technical mechanics and its political economy.
92NY has a long tradition of hosting business figures in genuine conversation rather than softball formats. For anyone working in finance, studying it, or simply trying to understand how decisions get made at the center of the global economy, this is a chance to hear a significant player discuss his career with someone who knows where the bodies are buried.