right! It was purely luck because I honestly had no idea what I was talking about, and that made a mark for me. And I stayed in the job sort of as the Chief US Economist, not the Chief Economist, for about 8 years. And then the Chief Economist, who was an old friend of mine from the Fed, retired suddenly, not by choice. And I was then asked to take over and run the economics group as Morgan Stanley’s chief economist. It was the best job I could ever imagine. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. And I did that for about 17 years and right around early 2007 I got a call from my good friend, a guy I’d worked with for 25 years, John Mack who ran Morgan Stanley at the time, and said you want to go to Asia and run our businesses as the Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia? And I immediately thought of the fact that there was really no way I could do that and maintain my position as a Chief Economist, so I told John, no, I don’t want to do it. I want to stay in the job that I was born for. And he said well, why don’t you think about it? None of you probably know John Mack, but when he says think about it, it was said with this slightly different inflection, intonation in his voice. And still, I thought about it long and hard, talked to my wife about it, and I decided to give it a roll. And I went out there in early 2007, moved to Hong Kong, family stayed here because I figured out pretty quickly I’d be on the road about 95% of the time flying all over Asia, half my time in China, and it made no sense to disrupt my family and bring them out to Asia. And so I did it, stopped being the Chief Economist, and became at that point the first Wall Street economist who transitioned into a senior banking role and I loved it. It was just, it was
right! It was purely luck because I honestly had no idea what I was talking about, and that made a mark for me. And I stayed in the job sort of as the Chief US Economist, not the Chief Economist, for about 8 years. And then the Chief Economist, who was an old friend of mine from the Fed, retired suddenly, not by choice. And I was then asked to take over and run the economics group as Morgan Stanley’s chief economist. It was the best job I could ever imagine. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. And I did that for about 17 years and right around early 2007 I got a call from my good friend, a guy I’d worked with for 25 years, John Mack who ran Morgan Stanley at the time, and said you want to go to Asia and run our businesses as the Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia? And I immediately thought of the fact that there was really no way I could do that and maintain my position as a Chief Economist, so I told John, no, I don’t want to do it. I want to stay in the job that I was born for. And he said well, why don’t you think about it? None of you probably know John Mack, but when he says think about it, it was said with this slightly different inflection, intonation in his voice. And still, I thought about it long and hard, talked to my wife about it, and I decided to give it a roll. And I went out there in early 2007, moved to Hong Kong, family stayed here because I figured out pretty quickly I’d be on the road about 95% of the time flying all over Asia, half my time in China, and it made no sense to disrupt my family and bring them out to Asia. And so I did it, stopped being the Chief Economist, and became at that point the first Wall Street economist who transitioned into a senior banking role and I loved it. It was just, it was
CLASS1-011012Transcription.docx