In this brief exchange, Chris Haroun emphasizes Goldman Sachs' role as a "finishing school" that grooms future Treasury secretaries. He references a comparison to "Spartan" and mentions "Ives" as a benchmark of size, underscoring the firm's elite status and its pipeline to high‑level government positions.
What if you went after Spartan
Ives? That's as big as it gets.
No thank you. My place is a finishing school for treasury secretaries.
I worked at Goldman Sachs for five years and although I loved it and I love the people I worked with, I understand why so many successful politicians come out of that place and I'll explain that in a second. But the lawyer in that clip mentioned that the firm is a finishing school for treasury secretaries and three recent treasury secretaries were former Goldman Sachs top executives, meaning Steve Newken, Hank Paulson and Robert Roop. And Goldman Sachs doesn't hire the smartest people because he hired me. But they do hire people that are not as abrasive as other firms at times and the interview process is like 40 interviews to get in. So they make sure that they hire people that don't ruffle as many feathers as what you might see at maybe other firms. And we all know that one bad hire can destroy the culture of any team.
