Sublime

Morgan made his specialty the refinancing, reorganization, and rationalization of America’s badly overextended and overcapitalized railroads; his “clients” included some of the largest, such as the Erie, the New York Central, and the Pennsylvania.

Morgan’s famous testimony to Congress that character came before money or property.

“I now bleed Morgan blood,” he says. “This is what I am going to do until they don’t want me here anymore.”

Howie, inside Morgan Stanley, would lose $9 billion on a single mortgage trade, and remain essentially unknown, without anyone beyond a small circle inside Morgan Stanley ever hearing about what he’d done, or why.

I was friends with Debra Larsen and Bruce Bockmann (who was Morgan’s most playful partner, choosing once, when I was a young associate, to introduce us to a new client with our roles reversed)