On Thursday, September 18th 2008, a Goldman Sachs trader based in London sent this somewhat cavalier email to colleagues and clients. Little did he know, but Goldman Sachs was in much more trouble than had been reported. With Morgan Stanley facing a run on the bank, as reported in Too Big to Fail: How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System — and Themselves, Goldman Sachs was worried about its own fate. Only 24 hours later, Goldman Sachs would begin secretly seeking merger deals with Citigroup and Wachovia at the behest of the U.S. government. By the end of the weekend, both deals were aborted, but Goldman, like Morgan Stanley, became a bank holding company, a desperate effort to restore confidence with the implicit backing of the government.

This email was quickly sent around Wall Street as an example of the arrogance and misinformation that remained rampant even at the height of the financial crisis.

Too Big to Fail: Internal Goldman Sachs Email