Former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein on Why He Doesn't Tweet

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

Tracy Alloway (0:18)

Hey there, Odd Lots listeners. This is Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:21)

And Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:22)

We are very pleased to bring you a live recording of the podcast that was part of Bloomberg Invest. That's our flagship investment conference over here at Bloomberg. And we truly had the perfect guest, someone I've wanted to interview for a very long time, never got the chance. It is of course the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein.

Joe Weisenthal (0:44)

Take a listen.

Tracy Alloway (0:45)

Joe, I have a confession to make.

Joe Weisenthal (0:46)

Yeah, go on.

Tracy Alloway (0:47)

This is probably the most nervous I've ever been for an Odd Lots episode.

Joe Weisenthal (0:51)

Are you for real?

Tracy Alloway (0:52)

Yeah. And I'll tell you why. And actually, the reason why, you'll know, because you were there.

Joe Weisenthal (0:56)

I do know.

Tracy Alloway (0:57)

The first time Joe and I ever met Lloyd Blankfein in person was at a sort of media roundtable. And for some reason, I felt it incumbent upon myself to tell a joke.

Joe Weisenthal (1:06)

Well, you were late too.

Tracy Alloway (1:07)

Oh, I was.

Joe Weisenthal (1:07)

You came in late.

Tracy Alloway (1:08)

All right, I forgot that part.

Lloyd Blankfein (1:09)

I like that.

Tracy Alloway (1:10)

I told a joke to try to, you know, make it up, I guess. Probably the joke was at Goldman's expense, at which point Lloyd leaned forward on the table and he said, let me tell you how I would have made that joke funny. And the worst part was he then made a very, very good joke that was a lot funnier than what I had just said.

Lloyd Blankfein (1:30)

Oh, I think I said, you should put the punchline at the end, not at the beginning.

Tracy Alloway (1:34)

That's right.

Joe Weisenthal (1:35)

Wait, can we actually talk about what the joke was, the context of the joke? Because I remember it well.

Tracy Alloway (1:39)

Go on.

Joe Weisenthal (1:40)

So the whole reason that the media roundtable happened was that apparently Lloyd was supposed to be in China for some reason. And something happened, like someone from the UK was there and Lloyd's schedule got changed. And so at the last second, they're like, oh, maybe some reporters will bring in. And then the joke that Tracy made was something about having to like, oh, were you going to go there to recruit princelings for Goldman Sachs, which at the time was one of those scandals.

Tracy Alloway (2:08)

I swear it was better than that.

Joe Weisenthal (2:10)

But that was the theme of the joke. It was at Goldman's expense.

Tracy Alloway (2:13)

All right, so we all learned our lesson, which is don't try to be funnier than Lloyd, because he'll beat you at it every time. But Lloyd, congratulations on the book.

Lloyd Blankfein (2:19)

Well, thank you.

Tracy Alloway (2:20)

Very exciting to be speaking with you. One thing I learned from the book is that you're spending your time trading now. And when I read that, I sort of had a vision of you on your phone on Robinhood trading like zero day options or something like that. What are you actually trading?

Lloyd Blankfein (2:36)

And where? Well, I'm sort of committed to Goldman. I would be on Robinhood, except for the history.

No, to me, that's one of the occupational hazards of my prior life is that I watch markets all the time. I watch markets at night while I'm asleep. And so I know the price of everything all the time. And I trade, but it's not like when you say I'm spending, you spend your time trading. No, it's just background noise while I'm having a conversation. In my life with people like, you know, hang around with sometimes in business, it is not considered to be rude that if you're talking to somebody, you're not looking at them, but looking at a screen or a phone or something like that. That's kind of okay.

Tracy Alloway (3:14)

So it's like, I work with Joe, I know.

Lloyd Blankfein (3:16)

So trade, doing that, when somebody says what percentage of your time, your time, it's like listening to music. You can listen to music while you're doing something else. So it adds up to more than 100 percent.

Joe Weisenthal (3:26)

What are you trade? We're not here for stock recommendations, but like, what's interesting markets and such that you feel compelled to click buttons and try to anticipate moves?

Lloyd Blankfein (3:36)

Well, I was always kind of a Mac. I mean, I came up through what we call the macro markets, the large things, interest rates, government policy, fiscal, the sort of stuff that kind of moves all assets together, although there's always differences. So that's my background. But I mean, the themes, everybody now is in tech, because if you weren't in tech, you'd be bankrupt because you'd be wrong for all this time. So everybody is given how the markets have moved sort of consistently for a very long time. I could tell you what everybody is kind of in. And of course, I could tell you who's getting hurt at any given part when it gets upset for a day. But I mean, probably things that wouldn't surprise you. But maybe the biggest surprise is that I'm all in. You know, so like I'm always 100% in equities now. Risk assets.