Goldman to Employees: Keep it Clean!

According to The Wall Street Journal, Goldman Sachs "is telling employees that they will no longer be able to get away with profanity in electronic messages." For those WSJ readers under 65, "electronic messages" means "email." But wait! There's more!

A spokesperson for Goldman told the paper that the firm already has policies regarding appropriate language, but that the new policy is designed to "ensure that they are enforced."

Goldman's ban on fleeting profanities, as the FCC calls them, is echoed in other companies. Morgan Stanley and Citigroup have recently also considered how language used in corporate email might impact their brands.

But what would America's pecuniary titans be without the abilities to retreat to invective when necessary?

Indeed, would Wall Street's Gordon Gekko seem such a threat if, instead of saying "When I get a-hold of the son of a b***h who leaked this, I'm gonna' tear his eyeballs out and I'm gonna' suck his f**king skull," he said, "When I get a-hold of whoever leaked this, I'm gonna write him a sternly-worded memo?"

If every GS email from here forward becomes profanity-free, we'll eat that foul-mouthed Don Draper's fedora. But we'll give folks the benefit of the doubt that they can self-censor (such is the way of the brave new banking world). So, herewith, a few suggestions to inspire GS employees looking to clean up their act:

This stock is sh*t. We're taking a wait-and-see position.

This deal is scr**ed. This requires closer analysis.

Their capital structure is f**ked. That organization features a less than ideal plan to secure the money necessary for business activities.

We jest, but in a time when Wall Street is still under the microscope on Capitol Hill and drawing fire on Main Street, it's interesting to see if mandating a more disciplined internal attitude will translate to a shift in external perception. In our view, we're taking a wait-and-see position.