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Chapter 3 looks at four firms that successfully withstood the crisis: JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and Toronto Dominion Bank (TD Bank), including their preparation, responses to the crisis, and effects of the crisis on them. These firms dealt in different ways with the period before the crisis and the crisis itself. They possessed discipline and long-term perspective, robust communications and information systems, capacity to respond effectively to early warning signs, and a process of constructive dialogue between business units and risk managers; each of the successful firms applied these according to its distinctive culture. Unsuccessful firms lacked many or all of these attributes. Unsuccessful firms included those that received massive government infusions of support (Citigroup, Bank of America, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, UBS, and AIG), were merged on disadvantageous terms (Bear, Countrywide), or simply went out of business (WaMu, Lehman, IndyMac).

This chapter offers an argument for the religious work of corporations through a specific engagement with Goldman Sachs. Common sense may suggest that there is no organization perhaps less religious than Goldman Sachs, described variously by its critics in recent years as a demon, a snake pit, and a vampire squid attacking American finance, the investing public, and the good of global humanity. Yet the labeling of any agency as such a scourge ought immediately tempt the scholar of religion, since one of the grounding assumptions of our work has been that the demarcation of the profane is intimately tied to the elucidation of the sacred. To that end, this chapter considers the Goldman Sachs Group as a case for students of religion. The chapter exposes the connections between the practices of this multinational investment banking firm and accounts of religious thought and practice in the modern period, focusing in particular on the control of information, the focus on institutional survival, the maintenance of relationships, the development of alternative forms of speech, and the commitment to the group above all other identities or alternative epistemologies.

The residential mortgage-backed securities (MBS) market expanded and collapsed as securitizers packaged increasingly toxic loans into private label MBS. New affordability products and expectation of continuously rising home prices replaced underwriting of the ability to repay. Securitizers and credit rating agencies misrepresented the risk of default. As a result of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, taxpayers now insure or guarantee 90 percent of loan originations. Public and private investors are seeking compensation through litigation. The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 produced a rigorous ability to repay qualifying standard as well as liability for noncompliance. A lender “skin in the game” or borrower down payment requirement might also be forthcoming. The new rules could substantially reduce the risk of default while excluding many borrowers and first-time homeowners from the mortgage market. An inclusive private label MBS market has not yet emerged.

This chapter looks at the leadership styles of mutual fund pioneer, Paul Cabot, and Goldman Sachs’ partner, Sidney Weinberg. Weinberg, who initially worked as a janitor’s assistant in Goldman Sachs, had impressed the firm with his intelligence and charm—the same assets that qualified Sidney’s appointment as a partner in 1927. In the wake of economic collapse, Sidney found himself overseeing nine corporations. With a response resembling that of Moses, Sidney presented twelve proposals for the more active involvement of his fellow directors in the corporate affairs, despite his lack of experience. Paul, however, used his family’s connection and influence as he made the potential abuses of investment trusts known to the public—similar to what the prophet Jeremiah had done to Judah.

This chapter discusses the modern story of Indian business and economy. After two hundred years of colonial rule and relative economic stagnation, India has started to regain its lost glory in world trade. According to Goldman Sachs Economic Research, India's high growth rate since 2003 represents a structural increase rather than simply a cyclical upturn and it projects India's potential or sustainable growth rate at about eight per cent until 2020. This chapter looks at a few sectors that are or can become powerful growth drivers to sustain the economy while providing employment to tens of thousands as they migrate towards a better lifestyle. These include information technology (IT), IT-enabled services, wellness and fitness, sports, pharmaceutical industry, entertainment and media, and automobile and component sectors.

This chapter offers a history of the concept of “corporate culture.” It begins and concludes with the 2008 financial crisis because respondents to the crisis suggested it was the result of a culture problem. As they emerged from years of fines, layoffs, and reported losses, American bankers repeatedly told their customers that they were working to prevent another crisis through an improvement in their culture. Arguing that corporate culture emerged as a way to humanize the increasing role of corporations in American life, this chapter exposes the anthropological origins and persistent effects of diagnosing “culture” in US corporate life.

Corruption is an international undertaking. A global cast of enablers, including oil-rich players from Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia, Caribbean letterbox companies, banks in Switzerland and Singapore, American real estate agents, and the giant investment bank Goldman Sachs, helped an ambitious young Malaysian businessman capture and spend over $4 billion in just a few years. Most oil boom corruption cases followed roughly the same playbook: spirit away illicit funds via offshore shell companies and bank accounts and then sink them into foreign property, businesses, luxury goods, and public relations campaigns. Through these channels, corrupt money and its destabilizing influence spread around the world.

This chapter considers how work became so central to contemporary life and how the corporate workplace became a particular site of political freedom and activity. The essay begins by looking at several instances of individual acts of conscience by working people: Bowe Bergdahl, Kim Davis, and Edward Snowden, and considers how those individuals experienced punishment for their acts of workplace conscience whereas a corporation, Hobby Lobby, was awarded its religious freedom for a corporate act of conscience. Through a history of the corporation in the United States, this chapter tracks how corporations have become worthy of expanded legal protections and have become increasingly affirmed as locations for self-formation and social incorporation. The chapter points to the way corporations and religions in the US have different legal expectations yet similar conceptual terms for engagement.

Contractual networks emerge when contracts of a financial nature are entered among actors such as firms, states, and individuals. Under certain conditions losses in one part of such networks may spread and cause general damage. This is what happens if the loss is unexpected, as Walter Bagehot has argued. When the financial actors are deposit banks, according to Robert K. Merton, the mechanism of self-fulfilling prophecy also comes into play. This is roughly what took place during the early phase of the euro crisis (2009–2010), with Greece operating as the trigger. The actors relied on so-called proxy signs, which turned out to be wrong, and when this was realized, a crisis erupted in the eurozone. The eurozone countries which, since the introduction of the euro had increasingly been seen as one unit, were now suddenly evaluated in their own right—with chaos in the market as a result.

This chapter presents a panel discussion among three distinguished practitioners: Governor Donald L. Kohn of the Federal Reserve; former Governor Laurence H. Meyer, now vice chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers LLC; and William C. Dudley, advisory director of Goldman, Sachs & Co. The three panelists share the view that asset markets periodically develop “bubbles,” upward price movements that cannot easily be justified by fundamentals and that often end in sharp declines.

When people do bad things to make huge sums of money, the problem is usually not the moral failings of specific individuals as much as the distortions of an economy that offers outsized rewards to winners. In our economy, people have incentives to behave badly when they're pinched financially or when they perceive that their job—or their future—is at risk. You can see this motive at work in any number of areas where ethical mis- conduct is common, as, for example, in cheating by students. What is needed is Presidential leadership to strengthen American values.

I have attended the launch of an education programme. It was blasted into orbit. I was in French Guyana for the launch of an Ariane rocket carrying a telecommunications satellite which would deliver broadband access to educational services for parts of Africa not reached by fibre or mobile phone masts. Many education programmes and teaching materials are available on-line but schools and colleges in parts of Ethiopia or Kenya or Rwanda do not have the broadband connections to access them. A small and affordable satellite dish at a local school or college opens up higher education to them. For centuries our picture of education has been very different. A wonderful image in a medieval illuminated manuscript shows a professor lecturing a class. It is a scene we recognize today: students at the front who are keen and attentive and others at the back who aren’t. The place is Bologna and the lecturer is Henry of Germany so the university is international. Some of the most profound features of university life are not very different from what those students experienced centuries ago, even whilst at the same time a student may be learning about the latest intellectual advances. This mix of ancient and modern is part of the particular appeal of the university—graduates dressed up in medieval robes and perhaps with some Latin thrown in are awarded doctorates for research out at the frontiers of knowledge. We are now at the moment when the technological revolution which has changed so much else in our lives is going to transform education. It won’t be the first time innovation has had this effect—the Victorian Penny Post made the correspondence course and the University of London external degree possible. There are sceptics who doubt the balance of ancient and modern is about to change radically. They argue that even whilst technology has changed the classic forms of academic study—the lecture, the printed book, the essay—are going to continue to be impervious to innovation because they meet deep human needs. Moreover there have been bold claims for the impact of technology on education which now sound pretty silly.