Charlie Rose

mfatah281  11/12/2010 02:23 AM Report

Interesting!

robdverity  11/10/2010 05:08 PM Report

His success still seems to come from whom not what he knows. Still in the big fraternity of the world.

doodah  11/10/2010 04:52 PM Report

A word on the pervasive greed of 'bankers' in general. In 2004, as I was closing my account in my local bank (which was bought-out, merged, whatever, a year or two or three earlier), as I was closing it (because I found a more reasonable, better bank (which recently has changed hands; which is another story), but as I was closing this account with the manager (I guess it was), this manager was a long time employee of the previous, original bank that my money WAS happy with. And I was explaining to her how disappointed I was with the current new bank in comparison to how happy I was with the original bank. And she agreed with me on all accounts (how it's a bad deal now for the "customers"), but she defended the overall right of the newly established bank's policies because she went from making $68,000 a year at the original bank to making $247,000 a year literally over-night, because of the buy-out whatever.

It's very easy to hate bankers; nowadays, if a banker were to talk to me like that(if it were a male) I might punch him in the nose (and break it).

REMant  11/10/2010 01:46 PM Report

Mr Rohatyn has an unfortunate record as an economist, having claimed in 1997 on this very show that derivatives would make the US recession-proof. And he was an advisor to Lehman's chairman from 2006. In 2009 he wrote a book on how government had built America and must rebuild it now, showing a fairly inadequate grasp of history. While it is true that some ignore the role of govt in stimulating the entrepreneurial spirit, that role was largely to just pass money to them, usually resulting in widespread fraud. The "Monster Bank" fell largely of its own weight, not anything Jackson did. The Erie Canal was funded by these Jacksonians and their state banks, not the Whigs and their national bank. You cannot just say it was all "government." The TVA is often held up as one of the biggest boondoggles in our history. Municipal power antedated it by decades, having been a Progressive program, but not one built on debt or with some Utopian vision in mind. The Corps of Engineers, on the other hand, has seldom got anything right. We have so many dams on Western rivers that they have no more water in them. Not that entrepreneurs with too much money were any better at it. Railroads were built with European investment, but haphazardly and in the wrong places. In any case in the 1930's we had a lot more money than we have now. And you do have to HAVE money, not a central bank printing it to cover the budget deficit. Capitalism has always been intertwined with bank credit, "leverage," and that's the main reason why creditors have more control over corps than the so-called stakeholders - the customers and workers. Like the ladies in the first half of this hour, fewer Rohatyn's would no doubt have yielded a better America, NYC notwithstanding.