[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]Dave: I’d refine your point as follows: I think more than a few of the people in charge really don’t fully understand the complexity of the operations they are running and at both the micro (individual deals and projects) and macro (enterprise wide) levels.

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Agree 100%. I was discussing this very issue with the CFO of a local bank recently and I said (I’m paraphrasing), “No one at these Big Banks has the intellectual capacity to understand certain important parts of their businesses. I was a math minor as an undergrad and fairly numerate relative to the average person. But I could no more understand many of the products being constructed in the bowels of these Big Banks than fly to the moon. These PhDs could sit down and try to explain to me what they’re doing for a week and I still wouldn’t understand most of it. So why do we think that even generic “smart guys” like Ken Lewis (I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt just for the sake of argument) understand what’s going on in their enterprises? Few humans on the planet can understand all of this crap and, at the same time, manage it properly. I would feel sorry for these dumb schmucks if it weren’t for the fact that their egos won’t allow them to say, ‘What the hell are you guys doing down here? I don’t understand it!!’ ”

Which is why it needs to be simplified, shrunk and backed by more capital.