Carl Icahn, the financier who sees himself as a corporate Robin
Hood of sorts -- waging war against rich and all-too-powerful corporate
boards and managements and protecting the poor, underrepresented
shareholders -- is keying in on power abusing, "mediocre" CEOs and boards that he believes helped to bring down the financial system. Icahn weaved his cries for better corporate governance into a CNBC
interview Wednesday focusing on the reasons and solutions for the
financial meltdown.
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Icahn, while not entirely critical of the
Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury's bailout plan, did criticize them
for seeking to bring private money into the suffering banks before
addressing the management that helped bring them down. He begged the
question of how can you put money into the banks "when you still gotta
be stuck with these clowns."
Icahn's deep-seated contempt for
CEOs, boards and so-called "clowns" is only matched by his hate for
so-called "mad scientists." In the CNBC interview, he likened the
financial crisis to a chemical factory in a small town having been
blown up by incompetent mad scientists in charge. He added that the
town's response was to band together and rebuild the factory while
keeping the mad scientists who created the mess in place. "You keep
the same damn mad scientists running the goddamn factory," he blasted.
Icahn did agree with some parts of the government's efforts,
calling the move to guarantee "money in the banks" including money
market funds, deposits and commercial paper a "good step."
Icahn's
answer to the crisis, besides the public beheading of clowns and mad
scientists, is to create partnerships of private investors who would
join forces to take over ailing financial institutions with the wealth
of private capital available in the market. - Michael Rudnick
See the videos at CNBC.com
Michael Rudnick is a senior writer for The Deal covering hedge funds.
Comments
That's "band together" not "ban together." Time to shoot the editor.