Blankfein Photo Caption Contest Winners!

The New Yorker-like photo caption contest from earlier this week was a big success — over 400 entries in about 8 hours.

Many of the responses were in similar veins, with plenty of movies quotes. The Matrix, Godfather, A Few Good Men, Goodfellas, Caddyshack, and Holy Grail were all sources of popular suggestions. But none were more popular than The Princess Bride, due to the more than passing similarity between Lloyd Blankfein and the character Vizzini. The relative position of Lloyd’s hands seem to inspire many captions — most of which were too obscene to use.  And several readers suggested lines from Seinfeld, primarily attributed to George Costanza. They did not win the contest, but they were quite compelling.

You can see all 428 submissions here.

OK, on to the contest winners: It was for the funniest, cleverest most poignant punch line. The winners, and all the runners up are below. My two favortites were so close, I had to declare a tie — Congratulations to Ken B, and to VennData — I’ll ping you for the address  to send your signed copies of Bailout Nation.

Our Caption Contest winners:

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“Shitty for whom?”

“I’m shorting me!”

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Caption Contest Runner ups:

3. “You’ve been giving Hank’s TARP money to companies making shitty cars since this whole thing started — so what’s wrong with a few shitty mortgages?”

4. Our motto at GS is “we screw the other guy and pass the savings on to you!”

5. I can’t wait to get home and stick some pins in my Taibbi doll!

6. Senator, trust me, this is the best CDO you can buy! In fact, we call it “The Shit”!

7. “Look, I said 30 cents on the dollar was plenty, but Hank insisted.”

8. We don’t just have brass balls, we have Gold Man-Sacks!

9. You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders – The most famous of which is “never get involved in a land war in Asia” – but only slightly less well-known is this: “Never go against Goldman when money is on the line”!

10. I gotta take this crap from congress? You people have been doing this since the ink used for “We the people” was even dry.

11. “I don’t understand whats wrong, you guys all voted for Gramm-Leach-Bliley”

12. “They always look like that!” – (referring to the despondent, stupefied, gaze of his fellow Goldmanites behind him to the left and right.

13. Was that wrong? Should I not have done that? I tell you, I gotta plead ignorance on this thing, because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing is frowned upon… you know, cause I’ve worked in a lot of offices, and I tell you, people do that all the time.

14. “…..we are selling weak securities all the time. We decided to offer a special on shitties for our most loyal and sophisticated clients.”

15. But it’s all in the Ferengi rules of acquisition.”

16. “I am not guilty, Senator, but I have hedged against my acquittal, just in case.”

17. “Don’t tase me, bro!”

18. How dare you call me a greedy, lying, thief! I’m not greedy! –

19. “INCONCEIVABLE!”

20. You leave my World of Warcraft character out of this.