Requiem for Old School Capitalism
Winthrop Smith — son of one of the original partners of Merrill Lynch Pearce Fenner and Smith — gave an occasionally angry eulogy for Merrill Lynch at the shareholders meeting that was to approve ML being sold to Bank of America:
Today did not have to come. In the past it was Merrill Lynch that came to the rescue of Goodbody, White Weld and Becker. It was Merrill Lynch that strong and successful firms like Fenner & Beane, CJ Devine, Smith New Court, DSP in India, Midland Walwyn in Canada and Mercury Asset Management wanted to join. Merrill always thrived in times of turmoil and grew market share. Today did not have to come.
Today is not the result of the sub-prime mess or synthetic CDOs. They are the symptoms. This is the story of failed leadership and the failure of a Board of Directors to understand what was happening to this great company, and its failure to take action soon enough.
I stand here today and say shame to both the current as well as the former Directors who allowed this former CEO to wreak havoc on this great company.
Shame on them for allowing this former CEO to consciously and openly disparage Mother Merrill, throw our founding principles down a flight of stairs and tear out the soul of the firm.
It’s all about priorities
Star Wars on Christmas.
Irony…example # 2,300,204.5B
That’s Entertainment
Deep Thought
Definition of a hypocrite
Now I have read it all
h/t susiemadrak.com for this one.
I read Frank Rich yesterday and he alluded to a similar thing and it gave me pause. But this article, from the WAPO is mind numbing.
But skeptics say Obama’s predilection for big thinkers with dazzling résumés carries risks, noting, for one, that several of President John F. Kennedy’s “best and brightest” led the country into the Vietnam War. Obama is to be credited, skeptics say, for bringing with him so few political acquaintances from Illinois. But, they say, his team reflects its own brand of insularity, drawing on the world that Obama entered as an undergraduate at Columbia and in which he later rose to eminence as president of the Harvard Law Review and as a law professor at the University of Chicago.
I get it, he should put the CEO’s of all the fortune 500 companies that have dazzled the country with their Brilliance and success? I mean, we go from an administration that riddled the Dept of Justice with lawyers from Regents University? We had a guy that was a horse judge run FEMA? And now, that damned liberal MSM is going to complain about Obama appointing…wait for it….smart people? Rhodes Scholars, MIT and Stanford Grads and others from Ivy League institutions? He should be appointing the CEO from Astra Zeneca to run the FDA?
jesus christ…I’m going to be sick reading this…continue on if you can. liberul media my ass