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The Chutzpah of HenryBlodget
By encinoman
What is chutzpah? The Yiddish expression means, roughly, a lot of nerve. One example of chutzpah is the man who kills both his parents and throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.
Another is disgraced Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget publishing an article called &;Why Wall Street Never Gets It.&; He claims wearily &;Our government—at our urging—will go to great lengths to try to make sure such a bust never happens again. We will “fix” the “problems” that we decide caused the debacle; we will create new regulatory requirements and systems; we will throw a lot of people in jail.&;
That&;s chutzpah from a man who could have gone to jail himself. And the esteemed Atlantic Magazine should receive the red badge of dishonor for publishing&;and paying&;Blodget, and for giving him a byline which reads &;Henry Blodget is the editor of Silicon Alley Insider, an online business publication.&; Omitted is the fact that he was fined $4 million dollars and permanently barred from the securities industries in 2003.
As you&;d expect, Blodget goes for self-exoneration.
&;By late 1998, I was cautioning clients that “what looks like a bubble probably is,” but this didn’t save me. Fifteen months later, I missed the top and drove my clients right over the cliff. &;
And guess whose fault it was? &;Later, in the smoldering aftermath, I was accused by Eliot Spitzer, then New York’s attorney general, of having hung on too long in order to curry favor with the companies I was analyzing, some of which were also Merrill banking clients. This allegation led to my banishment from the industry.&;
Blodget may call it an &;allegation&; but the SEC fined him a total of $4 million and as he says, banned him from the industry. Why he is allowed to comment professionally on Wall Street, and indeed run the Silicon Alley Insider, is beyond me.
But hey&;he&;s got chutzpah.
Tags: chutzpah, Henry-Blodget, The-Atlantic, Wall-Street-meltdown
This entry was posted on December 8, 2008 at 10:42 pm and is filed under business-journalism.
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