I love quoting movies. Andy, (one of my boys that I play basketball with on Monday nights) is always ready to finish a quote or blurt out the movie from one of the lines I say – I know I shouldn’t be running around playing basketball saying movie lines, but I do.
Me: “Finish him”
Andy: The Karate Kid
Me: “Whoa, nice shootin'
Andy: Ghostbusters
Me: “We will be perfect in every sense of the word, you drop a pass you will run a mile, miss a block and you will run a mile, fumble the ball, and I will break my foot off in your John Brown hind parts…and then you will run a mile. Perfection. Let’s go to work!”
Vinoj: Remember the Titans
(Andy and I are not exclusive in our movie quoting game. If someone - by someone I mean me - throws out a Titans quote…Vinoj is all over it.)
But, it is not just movies…it is also TV. My buddy that I run with, well, we just lob Seinfeld (crazy that the proper name “Seinfeld” doesn’t need to be spell checked but my name Trainor does – who says TV isn’t influential) quotes back and forth to each other. Three miles of…
Me: “she is my first Asian”
Eric: “isn’t that a little racist”
Me: “if I like the race, how is that racist”
I love quotes in general. One of the first things that Hanssie got me years ago (when she thought I might be a writer – back when we thought I had something to say, which as it turns out, I don’t) was a great big book of quotes. If I wasn’t lazy, I would walk downstairs and tell you the exact title of the book…but I am!
Anyway…I love movies, I love quotes…I love words…I love listening to what others have to say. I love Jim Rome because he is funny and he uses so much of pop culture in his show, you kind of lose sight of the fact that he started out in San Diego hosting a sports show (I think he has a show on ESPN). He repeatedly plays the same clip of Allen Iverson saying, “practice, we talkin' ‘bout practice…practice, not a game…we talkin’ ‘bout practice” (of course Iverson was complaining about Larry Brown fining him for missing practice a few years ago – side note, that was not a few years ago…that was like 8 years ago when the Lakers played the Sixers in the NBA Finals).
Who could forget Patrick Ewing’s immortal words, “We might make a lot of money, but we spend a lot of money.”? Pat was trying to explain to us common folk about why the rich pampered superstar athletes of the NBA had to hold out during labor negotiations in 1999. He might have missed the mark.
Since, it is apparently common knowledge that I love quotes my friend Ryan sent me these “famous last words.” So, I pass them along to you…I hope you enjoy them as much as I did…
"We had $17 billion of cash, that liquidity cushion has been virtually unchanged." ~ Alan Schwartz (Bear Stearns CEO) commenting on CNBC. Two days later the company had to ask for emergency funds from the Federal Reserve Bank and JPMorgan Chase.
"I expect there will be some failures of "smaller banks". Among the larger banks, the capital ratios remain good and I don't anticipate any serious problems of that sort among the large, internationally active banks that make up a very substantial part of our banking system." ~ Ben Bernanke (Federal Reserve Chairman) in February 2008.
*IndyMac failed in June '08 ($32 billion in assets)
*WaMu failed in September '08 ($307 billion in assets)
*Wachovia sold to Wells Fargo in October
*Citi, Countrywide, B of A, Wells Fargo, et al received BILLIONS in TARP funds in 2009
"If you put it in a baseball analogy, and you look at the subprime problem in the U.S., you would say we're in the eighth inning or maybe the top of the ninth." ~ John Mack (Morgan Stanley CEO)
"We're probably in the third or fourth quarter." ~ Lloyd Blankfein (Goldman Sachs CEO)
Both were addressing the subprime crisis and whether it was coming to an end. Unfortunately, the US Government agreed to pledge $700 billion to buy "toxic" debt. Seems like we might be in the second or third inning...or the 1st quarter!
"Fannie and Freddie are very solid institutions. They have more-than-adequate capital. They have access to capital markets." ~ Chris Dodd (Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee) in July of '08.
In September, the US Government seized control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, concerned about their mounting losses.
(The book Hanssie bought me was "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" - sad that when you start typing, you are upstairs and when you get done...it has been so long, you are downstairs.)
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