Jesse Jackson tells Goldman Wall Street is rising but citizens are falling.
Jackson and others urge Goldman (GS) to make its board more diverse. The board has been under fire this year from a number of angles, including its ties to the Galleon insider trading scandal.
Rajat Gupta, the former McKinsey head who has been mentioned in ongoing probes of that scandal, said earlier this year he won’t stand for re-election, as did Ruth Simmons, the Brown University president who was criticized on campus for her role in approving the bank’s massive compensation packages.
Their departures raise the question of how diverse the board is, and Jackson indicates he wants Goldman to do more to help regular people by rebuilding schools and backing struggling cities and states.
Blankfein has contended that an economic turnaround is when Goldman “really gets involved.” He tells shareholders he agrees that the economy must grow for Goldman to succeed — though the events of the past year, when Goldman made $13 billion as unemployment neared 10% — don’t exactly bear that out.