Apparently there's not enough room at a fundraiser for both Goldman Sachs and Occupy Wall Street.
The investment banking giant backed out of sponsoring a fundraising event hosted by the Lower East Side People's Federal Credit Union -- a lender that aims to help New York City's poor -- after Goldman officials found out the list of honorees included Occupy Wall Street, the Wall Street Journal reports. Goldman's $5,000 donation was expected to cover 25 percent of the dinner's cost.
The protesters camped out at Zuccotti Park mere blocks away from Goldman Sachs' headquarters have held up signs deriding the investment bank and ridiculed its compensation packages, according to CNN Money. One protester called the approximately $292,000 per employee the company has set aside for compensation "ridiculous."
The firm's profit dropped 75 percent in the first three quarters of this year, but Goldman only notched 25 percent off of its compensation expenses, according to CNN Money. The company's CEO Lloyd Blankfein took home an extra $3.6 million in bonuses in 2010, Dealbook reports.
The fundraiser fiasco might be the most direct confrontation between the two parties because Goldman employees will likely stay away from the protests if they want to keep their jobs. The investment bank, which has a reputation for carefully controlling its image, has banned its workers from going to the site of the protests for any reason, according to CNBC.
That hasn't stopped some from imagining what a meeting between the two decidedly opposite camps would look like. Dealbook created an animated video featuring an Occupy Wall Street protester crashing a Goldman event. When the cartoon version of Blankfein encounters the protester he asks her:
"Shouldn't you be on your recyclable couch not looking for a job?"
To which she responds: "Shouldn't you be stealing candy from a baby and lobbying for a candy-stealing tax deduction?"
Goldman employees haven't been free of suffering, however. In June, the investment bank announced plans to lay off 1,000 employees in order to save $1.2 billion, a trend that has been mirrored throughout the financial industry.