I don't know how you can write an entire article about the failure of Citigroup, GM et al and not mention Chuck Prince, but we'll leave that aside to deal with the more glaring error:

"But other huge banks are playing like Ted Knight's Judge Smails in Caddyshack. "

Judge Smails played damn well in Caddyshack! You're forgetting that he and his partner, Dr. Beeper ,were going up against the very strong duo of Danny Noonan (the caddy champion) and Ty Webb (who shot an average score of 68 on his home course). And this was after Al Czervik bowed out of the match with a fake injury (thus introducing a much tougher opponent--Danny--to the terms of an already established bet)

Smails even pulled out a clutch putt on the final hole with the help of his special putter, Billy Baroo, and it was only through the deus ex machina intervention of Carl Spackler's earth-shaking mole-seeking explosives that allowed Danny Noonan to sink his final putt.

The Battle of Bushwood was marred by controversy, even if "everybody's [was] going to get laid" afterward.

Daniel, since you're a finance writer, I'll leave you with a stanza of poetry read during the christening of the Flying W.A.S.P.:

"It's easy to grin

when your ship comes in

and you've got the stock market beat!

But the man who's worthwhile

is the man who can smile

when his pants aren't too tight in the seat!"

I'd think it'd be easier to smile when your pants aren't too tight in the seat. I know I'd prefer it to having pants that ARE too tight in the seat.

Not to mention that $3 EPS for Goldman is hardly a Tiger Woods-like performance. They did better than $20 EPS in both 2006 and 2007.

Even for a quarterly number, $3/share would be like shooting a 110 on a course with widened greens/fairways and holes the size of bomb craters.

Think the $3 was quarterly EPS..but still not Woodsian off a $180 stock.

Re: too tight in the seat. I never really understood that part of the poem when Smails read it...possible I mondregreened the words. I suppose your pants are tighter in the seat if you've got a big wallet in your back pocket.

I always thought it was, “when his pants ARE too tight in the seat”.

At the risk of analyzing this way, way past the point of ridiculousness, I hadn’t even thought of it that way (that Smails was referencing a fat wallet, which would make one’s pants tight, so it’d be hard to smile without tight pants) but that’s an interesting take. I always thought (per the way I heard it) that the joke was about how corny Smails is: he thought talking about somebody’s “seat” in his last line was clever and edgy but it’s really just about the lamest line ever uttered.

Now I can’t tell which approach I like more – “aren’t too tight” is actually kind of a smart line, but it still works because laughing about something like that makes Smails seem like a prick; “are too tight” works because Smails is being corny. Given that Smails is corny AND a prick, sounds like both work. I’ll have to check out the movie when I get home and see if I can tell which one it is.

Also, to the OP – that was an excellent (and hilarious) deconstruction of Gross’ lazy analogy. Well done.