I went to a strange event at Bloomberg world headquarters this evening. First came drinks and hors d’oeuvres. (I sort of cut in front of Wendi Murdoch in the drinks line, but she didn’t get hostile or anything.) Then came a panel discussion featuring Joe Stiglitz, Meredith Whitney, Jack Welch, Oliver Sarkozy (Carlyle Group financial institutions dude and Carla Bruni’s half-brother-in-law) and Austan Goolsbee. The NYT’s Andrew Ross Sorkin was the moderator, although about midway through he had to cede the microphone to Bloomberg’s Al Hunt who was supposed to facilitate questions from the audience and the Internets (the Sorkin segment was much livelier).
Anyway, my favorite moment came when Sorkin said he’d been talking to somebody (my guess: Alex Berenson), who said that Welch and his fixation on short-term earnings at GE had been as much to blame for the financial crisis as anybody. Said Welch:
I was there for 80 quarters. I find it difficult to think of 80 quarters as short-term.
You have to eat while you dream. You have to deliver both short- and long-term. The idea that some jackass can sit in an office and say, “Don’t bother me, I’m thinking about 10 years from now.” …