Since it’s pretty slow this morning, I thought I’d regale you with one of my old stories…
Long, long ago when the Maestro was still at the helm at the Fed, I was on the phone with a contact at a European bank. He tells me there was a Bloomberg story saying that Greenspan had had a heart attack. I did not have access to the Bloomberg wire, so typically I would call another contact to confirm the existence of the story. Just then, one of my colleagues in New York tells me he is hearing about the same story.
Markets were already moving, I had two sources telling me there was a story on the wire…So I put out a headline that Greenspan had had a heart-attack, Bloomberg reports. Markets go crazy, but about 10 minutes later, still no story on Bloomberg.
Turns out my colleague in New York and I were on the phone with the same bank at the same time and we got completely hosed.
Later that afternoon I got a call from a very friendly PR rep at the Fed in Washington giving me a gentle but well deserved rap on the knuckles. Perhaps my most embarrassing episode in a career replete with embarrassing episodes…
