Bygones

Some days I think the Fed should just declare us all too big to fail, pay off all existing debts everywhere, and start the whole damn game over again.

' July 14 (Bloomberg) -- CIT Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Peek moved from a New Jersey office complex to a 28-story glass tower on Manhattan’s 42nd Street featuring a lobby bathed in blue, green and red. Three years later, he’s fighting to keep the lights on at the century-old finance firm. Peek, 62, who joined CIT in 2003 after failing to land the top job at Merrill Lynch & Co., pushed the lender into subprime mortgages and student loans to pump up growth. Now, as investors flee the 101-year-old company’s bonds and shares on concern it may become the year’s biggest financial industry failure, Peek is trying to gain additional government support after receiving more than $2 billion last year. “You could make a cogent argument that senior management didn’t have a good grasp of the financial storm that was on the horizon,” said Sean Egan, president of Egan-Jones Ratings Co. in Haverford, Pennsylvania. “CIT has been through a number of near-death experiences. This time they cut it too close.”