Former Goldman Sachs Executive Director Greg Smith recently resigned from the banking giant, and today in a New York Times op-ed blew the whistle on what he called a “toxic and destructive” environment within the bank. Smith writes, “I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.”

Smith went on to write that banksters at the firm “callously” rip their clients off – and routinely refer to their customers as “muppets.” Most shocking, Smith reveals that the most common question he gets from fellow banksters is, “How much money did we make off the client?”

The dangerous part of this is that banksters like Goldman Sachs now make up more than a quarter of our economy when they used to make up less than a tenth. That means one-fourth of all the money in the United States comes from banksters on Wall Street preying on their customers with things like exploding mortgages and fees, jacking up oil and food prices by gambling on them, and making a profit crashing entire nations economies.

This is called financialization – and if it’s not reined in – it will destroy our nation and much of the developed world.