Rags to riches: Goldman Sachs’ Sidney Weinberg. Sidney Weinberg was born in 1891, one of eleven children of Pincus Weinberg, a struggling Polish-born liquor wholesaler and bootlegger in Brooklyn. Sidney was short, a “Kewpie doll,” as the New Yorker writer E. J. Kahn, Jr., described him, “in constant danger of being swallowed whole by executive-size chairs.” He pronounced his name “Wine-boig.” He left school at fifteen. At sixteen, he made a visit to Wall Street, keeping an eye out for a “nice-looking, tall building,” as he later recalled. From that point, Charles Ellis tells us in a new book, “The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs,” Weinberg’s rise was inexorable. The rags-to-riches story—that staple of American biography—has over the years been given two very different interpretations.
Today, that interpretation has been reversed. Weinberg was not a financial wizard. There is hardly a prominent corporation executive of whom he cannot—and, indeed, does not—say, “He’s an intimate close personal friend of mine.” . . . In E. Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs. Public Exit From Goldman Raises Doubt Over a New Ethic. William Cohan - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 04/28. William Cohan Extended Interview Pt. 1 - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 04/28. William Cohan Extended Interview Pt. 2 - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 04/28. 1929_Sidney%20J.%20Weinberg,%20October%2029,%201929.