Are people willing to shell out hard-earned money to find out how evil Goldman Sachs is? Publishing house Hachette thinks so, betting $1.5 million on a book from infamous ex-GS employee and NY Times op-ed writer Greg Smith.
Smith's resignation letter, printed in the Times, became a sensation, as it seemed to further push public perception of the financial firm into negative light. The past week the publishing world has been watching with great interest as a bidding war erupted for Smith's book, a bidding war which seems to have ended with the Penguin Group blinking and The Grand Central imprint of the Hachette Book Group picking up the worldwide rights for the as-yet-unwritten book.
Meanwhile, remember how in his op-ed Smith wrote that "It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as 'muppets,' sometimes over internal e-mail." Well, they may have called them that name in person or over the phone (muppet is brit for idiot, apparently) but Fox Business's Charles Gasparino is saying that his sources tell him there is "no evidence of malicuous muppet talk in emails." Wocka, wocka, wocka!
