{"id":190626,"date":"2009-11-07T20:40:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-08T01:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/11\/07\/heres-the-deal-because-youre-sorry-you-get-a-better-cell\/"},"modified":"2009-11-07T20:40:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-08T01:40:00","slug":"heres-the-deal-because-youre-sorry-you-get-a-better-cell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/11\/07\/heres-the-deal-because-youre-sorry-you-get-a-better-cell\/","title":{"rendered":"Here&#8217;s The Deal, Because You&#8217;re Sorry, You Get a Better Cell*"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>John Reed, who was the architect of the merger between Citicorp and Travelers Group, has now <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601109&amp;sid=albMYVE7D578&amp;pos=12\">admitted that he was wrong<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>John S. Reed, who helped engineer the merger that created Citigroup Inc., apologized for his role in building a company that has taken $45 billion in direct U.S. aid and said banks that big should be divided into separate parts.             <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d Reed, 70, said in an interview yesterday. \u201cThese are people I love and care about. You could imagine emotionally it\u2019s not easy to see what\u2019s happened.\u201d     <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>He then makes a very good analogy:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>\u201cI would compartmentalize the industry for the s<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">ame reason you compartmentalize ships<\/span>,\u201d Reed said in the interview in his office on Park Avenue in New York. \u201cIf you have a leak, <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">the leak doesn\u2019t spread and sink the whole vessel<\/span>. So generally speaking you\u2019d have consumer banking separate from trading bonds and equity.\u201d     <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/p>\n<p>I am tempted to quote Admiral David Beatty, &#8220;There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today,&#8221;  when the <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Invincible<\/span> and <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Queen Mary<\/span> blew up in short order at Jutland<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">Originally, I was going to say a nice long drop and a tight knot to ensure that your end is quick, but then I remembered that I oppose the death penalty&#8230;.Drat.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Reed, who was the architect of the merger between Citicorp and Travelers Group, has now admitted that he was wrong: John S. Reed, who helped engineer the merger that created Citigroup Inc., apologized for his role in building a company that has taken $45 billion in direct U.S. aid and said banks that big &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,1004],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190626"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}