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Dick Parsons Explains Why You Can Be A F*ck Up On Wall Street And Still Find Work

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Pretty simple, really: nobody else has the skills to destroy investment banks, investor capital, etc. You think any shmoe on the corner could do that? I think not. Just like the NFL.

"Have you ever noticed," the chairman of Citigroup, Richard D. Parsons, asked The Observer Monday evening, "that in the NFL, or in the NBA, or in Major League Baseball, this guy was a failure at Cleveland, and then he becomes the coach in Houston? These guys just move around from one team to another. Why is that? Because there isn't a very deep pool of skilled talent that exists. "And so, too, for a lot of financial stuff: Not everybody who's walking up and down Fifth Avenue at noon is capable of running a derivatives book," he went on, voice low, sitting in the 57th Street offices of the firm Providence Equity, where he's a senior adviser. "It takes a certain amount of skill and knowledge to be in that business."

Where Are They Now? [NYO]

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