Misquoting Morgan Stanley's CEO

There was certainly a lot of drama surrounding Morgan Stanley over the weekend. A lot of it had to do with the fact that Morgan Stanley, which, until the news came down that it and Goldman Sachs would become bank holding companies, was thought to be in dire straights. Some of that may have stemmed from a quote attributed to CEO John Mack in the New York Times in a conversation he had with Citi CEO Vikram Pandit. The quote said something to the effect that Morgan Stanley wasn't going to make it without a commercial bank merger. Later, the newspaper retracted the quote. One could argue the quote may have added to the urgency of the moment. But I don't think we can conclude that the historic shift by Morgan and Goldman happened because of the that non-quote. There was plenty of anxiety about the two giants already. That said, the role of the media in all this hasn't really been discussed in full. Has it done a decent job?

For more:
- here's an article from TheStreet.com