Ready? Set? Another Sunday surprise?
America, I am continually reminded these days, is a Christian Nation. Odd, then, that so many significant financial decisions made behind closed doors and announced on Sunday when the rest of us are supposed to be in church renewing our faith in ourselves, our communities, and, of course, our Nation.
And praying for our leaders; yes, praying hard for our leaders. Perhaps we have not been praying hard enough these days.
I am cynically amused; what more can you do in a world apparently gone mad? Yesterday, I skimmed the NYT website eyeing an article (apparently serious) by Ron Lieber with this telling headline: "Memo to the Uneasy Investor: Be Strong."
Of course, being strong is only good advice for about ten percent of the country's population or so.
Ah, yes...be strong.....sound financial advice from one of the nation's leading newspapers---the paper of record---in the country's financial capital.
Within the last couple of weeks I noted on this very site my wonderment at what to make of the fact that the nation's leading financiers and economic gurus from Washington, D.C. have regularly been conducting business on Sundays. Certainly not business as usual. What to make of it all? Should it become a regular feature of the new American life? A bit like Roosevelt's fireside chats, but much less comforting.
The players got an early start this week. All the usual characters. A different company. This week Lehman Bros, the country's fourth largest investment bank. The same cast, more or less: Timothy F. Geithner, President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson; SEC Chair Christopher Cox, and the CEOs: James Dimon (JP Morgan), John Mack (Morgan Stanley), Lloyd Blankfein (Goldman Sachs), Vikram Pandit (CitiGroup), John Thain (Merrill Lynch), and some folks from the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Bank of New York Mellon, also present.
Missing: oddly enough, Lehman Brothers.
So there you have it...everything fundamentally sound, turning the corner, the worst is over, be strong....
Ah, Sundays are becoming awfully familiar these days.
