Morgan Stanley-Charlie Rose Collusion?
So Bearpont Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was on Charlie Rose last night talking about the purple pot smoking elephant in the room and even though it would've been a lot cooler if Dimon had gone on Inside The Actor's Studio instead, it was still a pretty interesting interview. They talked about the $2, staying up all night, the Fed and so on and so forth. Of note to some was the fact that Dimon said that those responsible for BSC's fall should go to prison "for a long time," but that wasn't the most shocking aspect of the sit-down.
Toward the end of the interview, when things were getting loose, and Rose was comfortable enough to start asking unprofessional questions (ex. "Have you ever taken steroids?" "Have you ever killed a person?"), the conversation turned to looks. Seemingly out of the blue, the interviewer asked the interviewee, "Forgetting out balance sheets, and exposure, and all that shit, who is the hottest piece of man meat on Wall Street?" After registering some initial shock at the question, Dimon answered "Blankfein," with a confidence that suggested he'd thought about this before. There's no accounting for taste and beauty is subjective, so one would've assumed that Rose would accept the answer and move on to a follow-up question ("Have you ever thought about taking things with LB to the next level?") but oddly, he bellowed "No! Wrong answer. Try again."
Confused but game, Dimon offered "Pandit?" Apparently this was wrong again. For the next ten minutes, Rose proceeded to shoot down every name offered by JD until, in an apoplectic fit, Rose screamed "Mack, god damn it, the answer is Mack! Not Blankfein, MACK. Not Pandit, MACK. Not Fuld, MACK. No one really knew what to make of the thing, and it sort of seemed best to just act like everything was normal so nobody got hurt. Today, though, we've uncovered the reason behind Rose's bizarre and Rain Man-esque partiality toward the Lebanese Lothario. And, not to start a baseless rumor, a possible collusion between The Charlie Rose Show and Morgan Stanley that, when the smoke clears, we'll be able to point out as the reason for the (impending) implosion of JPMorgan.
Mack is undaunted. He has dreamed for three decades of running his own investment bank. As the youngest of six sons of a Lebanese-American wholesale grocer in Mooresville, N.C., Mack, 57, has little tolerance for big shots. He attended Duke University on a football scholarship, then started working in a small brokerage in North Carolina, which led to a job as a bond salesman for Smith Barney. At the time, Duke classmate Charlie Rose, the TV host, introduced Mack to Rose's first wife at a party. Mack was impressed. "Do you have a sister?" he asked her. Four years later, when the sister, Christy, came to New York, they met--and married soon after.
-- BusinessWeek, 09/23/2002
