US chief executives don't have any friends

Rolling Stone gathers no readers at Goldman Sachs

The highly entertaining war of words between Rolling Stone magazine and Goldman Sachs goes on.

Edited by Jonathan Russell
Telegraph, 03 Jul 2009

You may have heard some of it before but words of this quality are always worth airing one more time.

It was started in a Rolling Stone article by Matt Taibbi in which he described the world's most famous investment bank as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money".

The bank's uber-spinner Lucas Van Prag hit back, calling the article an "hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories".

He went on to ask why Goldman Sachs hadn't been implicated in the shooting of JFK and faking the moon landing.

More to the point he said the bank "rejects the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts".

What fun.

You couldn't ask for anything better to liven up the quiet summer months.

The ongoing row has been required reading for everyone in the City, er, apart from the masters of the universe at Goldman Sachs. I hear the Rolling Stone website has been barred by some at the bank.

McKenna not so ingenious with staff

More trouble for Patrick McKenna's Ingenious Media Group.

Just weeks after having to close its stockbroking arm, and in the same week the media investment company released its results, and then released the corrected version again the next day, I learn it has lost one of its senior executives, Sanjay Wadhwani to rival Edge Group.

Never mind, bad things come in threes I suppose.

Friendship that money can buy

So US chief executives don't have any friends, at least according to a review of their Facebook sites by Business Week. Sad, but sadder still is the answer to the problem: buy some.

An Australian company, I won't name it here, has just launched a service selling followers on Twitter. For A$87, or £42, you can buy 1000 followers, for A$3497 you can get a Messiah-like 100,000 followers.

Or you could spend nothing and get a life.