During the financial crisis, the markets were on edge. This was before the big firms blew up, I remember saying on the air, “Well, you’re going to get some commentary from teh ratings agencies.” The companies that were insuring all the big banks just didn’t have the money to insure them. So basically they all lost their triple-A ratings. I said that and the market moved 200 points. I remember walking into San Pietro, a restaurant in Manhattan where a lot of these guys had lunch and I saw Jack Welch, who came up to me and said, “Charlie, you’re doing great but watch this whole notion of moving the markets. Just watch it or you’ll get your brains blown out.” I said, “Literally?” He said, “No, but it’s a dangerous, dangerous thing.” [New Canaan-Darien Magazine]
Jack Welch
Charlie Gasparino Almost Got His Brains Blown Out For Breaking News During The Financial Crisis, But Not Literally
By Bess Levin“Free money in the hands of very smart people for too long is going to create something that’s not very pleasant,” Welch said. “I don’t know what it exactly is. But every time we get free money to lots of people who are very, very smart and know how to use it you end up with a bubble or a problem that we don’t quite see in front of us.” [CNBC]
A few years back, Jack Welch met a man named Michael Clifford at a party. Clifford is the lead investor in the Chancellor University System, LLC, and over shrimp puffs educated Welch on the merits of online schools. Jackles was not initially sold. But, he told the Wall Street Journal, he was impressed with the University of Phoenix, the Harvard of the Internet, which is owned by the Apollo Group, and after a little research decided he wanted in. Welch cut Clifford a check for $2 million and in exchange got his name and face stamped on the school’s MBA program, AKA “The Jack Welch Management Institute.” We first learned of this exciting opportunity in June 2009, before things were officially up and running. There were a few kinks to work out and then time passed and no one said anything about it and eventually we forgot about the whole thing and kind of figured Welch said “fuck it, I don’t feel like doing this anymore.”
Then today during an interview with Bloomberg, Welch mentioned that things are “really starting to take off. We’re getting students from around the world…it’s thrilling.” A quick search indicates Jackles speaks truth. The JWMI has a whole website with courses and whatnot, where tomorrow’s “winners” (that’s what Jack calls them) are being groomed. Continue reading »
Yesterday we shared the joyous news that Jack Welch had made it home after a harrowing 92 days in the hospital spent battling a staph infection. Today he sat down with Fortune to discuss how he’s feeling and plans for the future. First off, he’s doing great and predicts he’ll be in “fighting shape” within three months. Second, for those of you wondering why your tuition check for the Jack Welch (Online) MBA Institute was cashed months back but you’ve yet to receive a log-in or confirmation of a seat in Professor Bartiromo’s tutorial “Suck it, Trebek,” remain calm. Jack says “there was a delay of game but the school is going to launch in January.” So that’s all nice to hear but what we really wanted to know was how J-Dubs landed in the hospital in the first place, with an infection so bad newspapers were preparing his obituary. What was the source of the staph? Welch has a theory.
[via BI]
I know you thought Jack Welch had faded away. We did. Sure, he’d appear at this or that conference. Make a speech here or there. But we were kind of convinced that he had a body double doing all this work while he played bridge at the secret Welch Hideaway Compound. Well, that was until his appearance last night with Larry Kudlow when the guy who gave us Jeffrey R. Immelt poured out his heart. He had some not-so-kind words for the new “owners” of AIG:
KUDLOW: Geithner and his group should have called Liddy down to Washington. I don’t understand this. And just sat him down and say, okay, here is the way life works. Here’s the way it’s going to work. Is that what you’re saying?
WELCH: It should have been resolved between Liddy and the Treasury, or the Fed, or whoever it is that represents the US government who is the owner of AIG! The idea that these guys who own it, can now all throw rocks at it, makes no sense. It would be like a board of directors throwing rocks from the outside and not being responsible.
Jack makes a good point. The government has always seemed to believe that owning a majority stake of common somehow grants them some sort of mystical micromanaging power over individual salaries and operational details that would make a Chancery Court puke. Are all these lawmakers just this clueless about corporate governance? Or is the current outrage really just populist pandering? Given that the details of AIG bonuses have been public and in front of Congress for quite some time and this bit of outrage is so sudden and violent, we think the latter.
An Interview With Jack Welch [CNBC]
Jeff Immelt: Is anyone from the damn public relations office back yet?
Vice President: The new girl, Tina.
JI: Wait, the hot little number who’s schtoinking that editor at that financial paper?
VP: The Wall Street Journal?
JI: Right. The Streetwise Journal.
VP: The Wall Street Journal.
JI: Get her sweet buns in here. Now. Oh, and I’d like my eggs poached this morning.
VP: Right.
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