Kermit the Frog sets the record straight

For attention of
Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs


From the office of Kermit the Frog

Dear Lloyd

Can I call you Lloyd? I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but when you’ve guest-hosted The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and Larry King Live and been Lady GaGa’s date at the MTV Awards, you learn not to be intimidated by big-name celebrities.

And I know, in the world of business, nobody comes bigger than Goldman Sachs (just don’t tell my paymasters at Walt Disney).

I write in response to the ‘exit letter’ from Greg Smith. It certainly caused a stir on my lily pad. What has prompted such an explosion? I refer, of course, to Smith’s use of the word ‘muppets’. Over the past 12 months, he claims to have witnessed five different managing directors refer to clients as ‘muppets’.

Now, as you may have heard, my great friend Fozzie Bear was cleared out by the subprime crisis, Dr Bunsen Honeydew was long on Icelandic banks, and Gonzo, Animal and Floyd Pepper are heavily involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

I’m something of a financial whizz kid myself, having hosted an ABC News special way back in 1987 to explain the stock market, so I operate as a day trader, while Miss Piggy’s investment strategy is inversely related to the size of her shoe collection.

So really my question is: to which muppets did your colleagues refer? None of my other pals from the shows have ever really capitalized on our global success, and would not have the requisite funds to be a Goldman Sachs client – which is really a roundabout way of asking: was ‘muppets’ being used in a derogatory fashion?

Really? Really? Can’t your guys pick on people their own size? And where do they get off using our name as a term of abuse? The Muppet Show has been shown in more than 100 countries, reaching an audience in excess of 250 mn people. That’s roughly equivalent to the population of Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous nation.

Remind me again: how many countries does Goldman Sachs operate in? Would the answer be 30? Am I warm? Shall we compare clients now? With the exception of Miss Piggy, who sometimes lets her ego run away with her, we at The Muppets have always put our audience and their interests first! Can you say the same?

One final point, before I have to dash for lunch with Tom and Katie: you claim ‘diversity is at the very core of our ability to serve our clients well’. How can you claim to be diverse if you have yet to employ a real muppet? Maybe then your MDs would curb their tongues!

Sincerely

Kermit the Frog 

Helen Dunne is editor of CorpComms in London.