Yes, it’s true, Blankfein did tell a reporter for the Sunday Times of London that he’s just a banker “doing God’s work,” a quote the newspaper couldn’t help but use for the headline of its 6,900-word opus about Goldman last weekend. And, no, Blankfein didn’t mean for these words to be taken seriously, according to the bank’s spokesman, Lucas van Praag.

It was “an obviously ironic, throwaway response,” van Praag told me in an e-mail. “Sort of like saying, ‘I’m living the dream’ in response to a question about how you’re doing.”

He went on: “And you can also say that the Sunday Times understood the context perfectly but decided to ‘spin’ it in a cynical attempt to generate more interest in their story and, presumably, to see if their interpretation could be used to generate a reaction that could be used to ‘create’ news.”

Poor Lloyd. Life is so unfair.