By CHRISTINA REXRODE

Associated Press

Greg Smith wrote the essay that echoed across Wall Street like a thunderclap.

Smith, 33, was a vice president at Goldman Sachs until March. He announced his departure from the investment bank with a blistering essay in The New York Times, accusing Goldman of routinely deceiving clients and relentlessly pursuing profit at the expense of morality.

And he struck a nerve. The essay, on the Op-Ed page of The Times, went viral in the financial world and beyond. Smith was praised for uncloaking corruption that was crying out to be addressed, and also derided as a disgruntled employee.

Goldman Sachs denies Smith’s allegations about deceiving clients. The bank says it took his concerns seriously, thoroughly investigated them, and found no evidence to support them.

Smith’s book, “Why I Left Goldman Sachs,” is being released Monday. It’s a window into a company that is notoriously tight-lipped, with stories about a swaggering place where interns arise for 5 a.m. meetings and business trips mean slapping down $150 for one person’s dinner.

What Smith hopes to do, he says, is educate people about how Wall Street works, and fuel a public conversation about what went wrong ethically, and how to fix it. The practices that caused the financial crisis, he says, were never really resolved; they’re just lying dormant.