If it were just the Joseph Wilson tea-drinkers at the CIA, I might be skeptical, but that's also what some of the better Wall Streeters will say after a couple of drinks of harder stuff.
Q. Can you give us some of your thoughts and prognostications about Europe?
Byron Wien: "Yeah, I was hoping you wouldn't ask about that. I almost got fired once for my comments on Europe, and it looks like I'm going to run that risk again. In 1995 I was going to Europe and I gave an interview to a Wall Street Journal reporter. He said, "Boy you have a terrible job - you have to travel all the time." I didn't want to tell him that the only time I returned reporters phone calls is when I'm in airports, and I said, "I really like to travel - I learn a lot. " And he said. "Where are you going?" and I said, "Amsterdam." He said, "What do you expect to learn there?" And I said, "Well, I have this theory that if the European union doesn't work twenty years from now, Europe will be a vast open air museum." Now usually when I say something irresponsible to a reporter I say, "You know, I was only kidding about the open air museum," but I liked the ring of it - you know, the open air museum.
(LAUGHTER)
Byron Wien: "...so I didn't say anything, and the next day in the European Wall Street Journal and the U.S. Wall Street Journal, that line printed and I got in an enormous amount of trouble for it.
"I've generally had a skeptical view of Europe and I don't think that the European union is working as seamlessly as it was supposed to...." (Byron reverts to diplomat-mode)
(From: Morgan Stanley Outlook & Strategy 2004)
[smile] I don't think that it’s the CIA that makes it absurd, it’s that anyone tries to predict something so far out of something so volatile and dynamic.