We’ve made the point in this blog before that you need a license to drive a car in the United States, but you don’t need a license to be the CEO of a financial institution that can draw on the full faith and credit of the United States when the CEO makes a mistake. We need to replace “too big to fail” with “too smart to fail.”
We need CEOs who meet a higher standard that Dick Fuld, Angelo Mozilo, Charles Prince, and Stanley O’Neal. And that responsibility rests with the shareholders and the Board of Directors. They need to take that responsibility to avoid a repeat of the last two years.