Good morning. A few items to get the day started:
More on yesterday’s banker meeting at the White House (NYT)
In fairness, there is little question that they wanted to be there and seemed genuinely disappointed they couldn’t make it. (You could hear it in Mr. Mack and Mr. Blankfein’s voice when they got on the call. “Mr. President, we’re upset we’re not able to be there, but we’re on line with you now,” Mr. Mack said. “It’s certainly not for a lack of effort,” Mr. Blankfein quickly followed up.)
But this missed meeting clearly didn’t help their case.
After all, they sure hoofed it down there last year, when Henry M. Paulson Jr. ordered them to meet him in Washington with less than 24 hours of notice. Most of them got there early, and went home with $10 billion to $25 billion of taxpayer money.
Even bigger than too big to fail (New York Times) This pretty much sums it up.
The biggest losers of the decade (Clusterstock)
Marketer links China and US businesses (NPR)
Small business struggles in Colorado (PBS NewsHour)
The credit crunch has reached crisis proportions for small businesses in Colorado. A longtime business consultant told NewsHour producer Terry Rubin and me that this is the worst business climate he’s seen in more than thirty years.
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