But he’s trying to raise new money and every single time he sits down with a potential source of cashola, or tries to convince an existing one to stick it out, last year is all they want to talk about. While it’s unclear to us as to why Griffin doesn’t just put his foot down and preempt all discussions by saying questions about 2008 are categorically off the table and that if anyone in the room so much as thinks the words “fifty-five percent loss” or “ass bleeding” or “maday!” he is gone, we respect the guy’s desire to be seen as flexible, for the time being. Still, we understand how sensitive the subject of ast-lay ear-yay is with KG and so that he doesn’t have to suffer through anymore PTSD flashbacks, we’ve decided to put together a little primer/pitch for anyone considering throwing some bills his way. The year that came before ’09 will be touched on, so when you actually sit down with Kenny-b, there’ll be no need to bring it up. Got it? Let’s do this.
Most of you probably want to hear a little reflection on what we could have done differently. What our biggest mistake was so we don’t make it again, and lose a few billion of your money. Was it too much leverage? Too much hubris? Too much time spent away from the desk on photo-shoots? None of the above.

Citadel’s biggest mistake last year, Mr. Griffin said, was putting too much faith in regulators’ ability to deal with the global meltdown.

Now let’s talk sacrifices. Major, huge-ass sacrifices have been made in Chicago in an effort to turn things around. Whether or not they have to do with the firm’s bottom line so much as Ken’s newly taut one is not the point.

He occasionally dispatches his driver on a 200-mile round trip to fetch milkshakes from LeDuc’s Frozen Custard in Wales, Wis., near where Mr. Griffin grew up. The folks at LeDuc’s refer to the financier as “the man of a thousand shakes,” based on a birthday order in 2004 that was so big, it got shipped to Chicago in a truck. But Mr. Griffin’s driver “hasn’t been around in maybe six months or a year,” says Jim Shackton, owner of LeDuc’s, whose staff in past years came to recognize him when he’d pull up to the little pitched-roof custard shop in a silver Mercedes sedan. (“Nice car,” Mr. Shackton says.)

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