You know social justice has become a corporate joke when Goldman Sachs are enforcing boardroom gender & race quotas

The last time Goldman Sachs tried its hand at regulation it led to the 2008 financial crash which caused economic catastrophe across the world, the results of which are still felt today.

Now it’s turning its hand to social justice, with the absurd idea declaration that it will no longer back Initial Public Offerings from companies whose boards are occupied solely by straight white men.

This ultimatum was delivered with a straight face by the bank’s CEO David Solomon to an audience of head-nodding social justice warriors masquerading as the billionaire and millionaire capitalists of this world on their annual, self-congratulatory festival of money-bathing in Davos, where they plot and scheme to tell the rest of us how we should live our lives.

Solomon told his audience that from July 1 this year in US and Europe, Goldman Sachs will not take a company public unless it has at least one diverse board candidate, with a focus on women.

So what about Bulgaria? That’s a European nation known for good tech ideas and skilled workforce, but certainly less diverse, in terms of colour than the countries of western Europe.

Would this banking guardian of the world’s minorities really refuse to back a unicorn because a standout Bulgarian start-up lacked a non-white face on it’s board? What a crock.

It is tokenism posing as virtue. Woke notions as affirmative action.

Like kids say, as soon as your parents like something that you do, it is no longer cool. So with banks. The moment they get their sticky paws on anything other than money, it becomes corrupt, nasty and totally unpalatable.

Can anyone seriously imagine Goldman Sachs knocking back a billion-dollar IPO because the candidate doesn’t have a woman on its board? Don’t think so. Surely, there will be a stock of eligible proxies on tap for Goldman Sachs to offer such board services as part of their over-reaching portfolio.

Need a woman? We have just the gal for you! Need a brown face? Here you go! Need a hedgehog? We have just the thing!

For nothing is beyond, what US journalist Matt Taibbi so eloquently called, the blood-sucking vampire squid bank that is Goldman Sachs.

So far, it’s only the western world that Goldman Sachs dare even suggest this ludicrous idea to. Can imagine how such nonsense would go down in boardrooms across Mumbai, Shanghai or Seoul?

They’d be laughed out of town.

Instead, in Switzerland, rather than choke on their fondue, the audience of über-wealthy know-it-alls applaud the suggestion as if Moses had just appeared from the top of Mount Sinai with this idiocy carved in stone.

Making this announcement, Mr Solomon was voicing not just his bank’s venture into not-too-subtle social engineering on corporate boards, but also the death knell of meritocracy where the idea of “the best man for the job” is taken so narrowly that it’s very suggestion causes offence to liberals.

Let us remember that after the financial crash, Goldman Sachs was fined $5 billion for its appalling behaviour, and was even then considered to have escaped lightly. It’s top executives admitted they had defrauded the banks investors, and it took a $10 billion bailout from the American government to ensure it didn’t collapse, sucking the whole financial system down with it into the abyss.

But now, those who run this infamous bank  have summoned up the nerve to lecture the rest of us on social justice, perhaps as if we had all suffered simultaneous amnesia and forgotten their past transgressions.

While that might be the case among the millennials, at whom this disingenuous bull is aimed, but don’t fathom the hypocrisy, there are plenty of us around who shudder in horror at the very thought of Goldman Sachs assuming the moral high ground on any issue.

Ever.

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