Block that metaphor! Blankfein on the credit crisis

It’s early, but Goldman Sachs Group Chairman Lloyd Blankfein is at least a runner-up for the 2008 award for Most Mixed Metaphors Used to Describe the Credit Crisis in One Sitting.

At the brokerage’s annual shareholder meeting today in Lower Manhattan, Blankfein said of the credit crisis (I’m quoting here from Reuters and Bloomberg News): "We’re closer to the end than the beginning. I think we’re getting to that point where people are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel."

Then he went on to make a football-game analogy: "Maybe we’re at the end of the third quarter, beginning of the fourth quarter," he said. "If you watch sports, sometimes there’s a lot of timeouts in the fourth quarter. It takes longer to play than any of the other quarters, and sometimes it ends in a tie and goes into overtime."

And if this is the fourth quarter or overtime, he concluded, "No promises on how long that is."

Is everyone clear on this now?

Photo: Lloyd Blankfein. By Suzanne Plunkett/Bloomberg News

Comments

[sharkytowers]

All these financial "experts" crack me up when they try to dumb it down for us plebs.

[tedson]

I think overtime will end sometime after the election.

[Bill]

I was reading recently that you could lay any number of economists end-to-end and never reach a conclusion.
### "Give me a one-armed economist," President Harry S. Truman once demanded as he vented his frustration over economic advisers who offer straightforward recommendations, then hedge their bets by tacking on a slew of caveats, often beginning with the phrase "but, on the other hand..."