Nicolaus Mills: Pulling a Goldman
[Nicolaus Mills is professor of American studies at Sarah Lawrence College and co-editor with Michael Walzer of Getting Out: Historical Perspectives on Leaving Iraq.]
It’s time to add a new phrase to our vocabulary: “Pulling a Goldman.”
There’s ample precedent for expressions that grow out of historical moments, then take on a life of their own—and given the reported $840.1 million that the Royal Bank of Scotland lost in its recent dealings with Goldman Sachs, we can count on pulling a Goldman to have meaning on both sides of the Atlantic.
When we speak of being forced into a “Hobson’s Choice,” we mean being faced with only bad alternatives, and our reference is to the seventeenth century English liveryman, Thomas Hobson, who required his customers to take the horse nearest the door.
When we say someone is “in like Flynn,” we have in mind a man with many lovers, and our reference is to the Australian-born movie actor Errol Flynn, a 1930s and 1940s heartthrob starring in such films as Captain Blood and the Adventures of Don Juan.
In the case of a Ponzi Scheme, we are speaking about an investment swindle in which early investors are paid with money from later investors (who lose their money because nobody is left to pay them), and our reference is to the Charles Ponzi, who as a result of the con game he perfected became rich before being caught and serving a prison sentence that lasted from 1920 to 1934.
In this spirit, “Pulling a Goldman” is useful shorthand—much more meaningful than the popular, but bland, pulling a fast one. In its generic meaning pulling a Goldman would describe any plan designed in advance to fail....
Read entire article at Dissent Magazine
It’s time to add a new phrase to our vocabulary: “Pulling a Goldman.”
There’s ample precedent for expressions that grow out of historical moments, then take on a life of their own—and given the reported $840.1 million that the Royal Bank of Scotland lost in its recent dealings with Goldman Sachs, we can count on pulling a Goldman to have meaning on both sides of the Atlantic.
When we speak of being forced into a “Hobson’s Choice,” we mean being faced with only bad alternatives, and our reference is to the seventeenth century English liveryman, Thomas Hobson, who required his customers to take the horse nearest the door.
When we say someone is “in like Flynn,” we have in mind a man with many lovers, and our reference is to the Australian-born movie actor Errol Flynn, a 1930s and 1940s heartthrob starring in such films as Captain Blood and the Adventures of Don Juan.
In the case of a Ponzi Scheme, we are speaking about an investment swindle in which early investors are paid with money from later investors (who lose their money because nobody is left to pay them), and our reference is to the Charles Ponzi, who as a result of the con game he perfected became rich before being caught and serving a prison sentence that lasted from 1920 to 1934.
In this spirit, “Pulling a Goldman” is useful shorthand—much more meaningful than the popular, but bland, pulling a fast one. In its generic meaning pulling a Goldman would describe any plan designed in advance to fail....