Lloyd / Tom

This photo of Lloyd “reading” was totally posed by his friend the photographer, David “Davey” Grizzle, for the 1974 Harvard yearbook.

Llyod in 2023.

Tom, berry picking in Sweden, 1970s.

Tom these days.

Author Tom Wolfe called them “Masters of the Universe”—the crop of ambitious young Wall Streeters in the 1980s who helped usher in an era of greed and prosperity.

But for billionaire investment banker Lloyd Blankfein, who would succeed Hank Paulson in 2006 as CEO and Chairman of Goldman Sachs, leading a global empire wasn’t about greed; it was about managing risk, a high-wire act he performed well because it drew upon a deep-seated personality trait: constant worry.

Before conquering the financial world, Lloyd had to control his own anxieties, including the ones that plagued him during his undergraduate years at Harvard. “I don’t think I had any point in my academic or commercial life where I could say I was relaxed and enjoyed the moment,” he says now. “It was a general state of insecurity and nervousness about doing okay.”

The son of a post office mail sorter and receptionist, Lloyd grew up in public housing in Brooklyn and arrived at Harvard in the fall of 1971, feeling like he was from Mars. In this frank and free-wheeling interview for PasstheMic75 with documentary film producer Tom Yellin, who is both a classmate and friend, Lloyd talks about how he steered Goldman through the 2008 financial crisis and is now wrestling with life post-Goldman. Following a serious health scare in 2015, he’s also arrived at a new place of acceptance and gratitude. “I’m doing things only that I like to do,” he says of retirement, including taking a deep dive into studying physics. But once a commodities trader, always one. “Every morning,” he admits, “I trade the markets."