While this blog was bogged down with the trivial pursuits that customarily fill its days, it neglected a major news story from the past two weeks, namely the David versus Goliath victory of the owner of the web site "Goldmansachs666.com" over the Prince of Darkness aka "Goldman Sachs." "Www.goldmansachs666.com" is a site that features stories about all that is loathsome and ignoble about the Leviathan of Wall Street, an investment banking giant that brooks no Jacks cutting down no stinkin' beanstalks that Goldman Sachs is climbing. Not since the "Goldman Sex" cat fight has the world waited so breathlessly to determine whether The Good or the Dark side of The Force would prevail in a struggle that is sure to generate not only a best seller of a paperback, but an action movie blockbuster for the summer of 2010.
In a surprising conclusion in what has been a real life David vs Goliath battle, Florida-based estate agent and investment adviser, Mike Morgan, will be allowed to keep his GoldmanSachs666.com site up and running.
The bank, which on Tuesday reported a 65pc rise in second-quarter profits to $3.4bn (£2.07bn), has backed down after earlier threatening to shut down the site, which is designed to discuss what Mr Morgan considers to be the the bank’s failings.
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In an agreement reached in the US District Court in Florida, Goldman agreed to “refrain from any action that interferes with Morgan’s use” of the site as long as he continues to display a prominent disclaimer which states that the site has nothing to do with the bank.
Web site owner Mike Morgan was self-effacing and humble in the face of his overwhelming victory.
“Mike Morgan never backs down,” wrote Mr Morgan on the site, the name of which he has previously joked relates to the S&P500’s most recent bear-market low – 666 points – rather than the number of the beast.
“I kicked their butt,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
Yes, he did. However, he also suffered a heart attack during the battle and had to step down from running his site. As The Daily Telegraph so aptly observes, his victory might well be considered "pyrrhic."
The "disclaimer" that Goldman Sachs wrung out of Mr. Morgan is, to say the least, less than overwhelming: "This website has not been approved by Goldman Sachs." That's like Lucifer suing St. John the Apostle over The Book of Revelations and then settling for a disclaimer to the following effect: "This divine scripture has not been approved by The Devil, The Beast, The Old Serpent, The Dragon, Abaddon, or any other denizen of Hades, so help me God." I think even that feeble disclaimer is watered down considerably by the balance of the paragraph that contains the disclaimer: "This website was designed to provide information about Goldman Sachs to demonstrate how destructive this company is to our lives and the hopes and dreams of our children."
Did you know that Goldman Sachs also slaughters baby seals and is the primary cause of global warming?
This is what often happens when big bullies attempt to intimidate a sole ranter in cyberspace with the threat of litigation. In Goldman Sachs' case, Morgan sued them back and brought the very existence of his web site to a whole new audience, including the author of this post. I had never heard of the site prior to Goldman Sachs making Morgan a martyr to Wall Street overkill. Thanks, Goldman Sachs!
Sometimes, if you simply ignore a critic, they do, in fact, go away. Even if they don't, you need to carefully consider how much infringement is actually involved, and how much unsanitary blowback might result, before you let loose the junkyard dogs of civil litigation and set them bounding after the fox. Every once in awhile, the fox not only eludes capture, but climbs a tree and leaps down on the faces of the huntsmen to claw their eyes out or, as Mike Morgan so eloquently put it, "kick their butt."
On the other hand, perhaps Goldman Sachs settled with Mr. Morgan in order to concentrate on its primary project: purchasing the US Treasury Department.
