Morgan Stanley CEO Says Wall Street Needs to Ditch Its Hero

What James Gorman actually said (during the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association conference) was this: "There are a fair number of the senior folks who actually believe they are uniquely qualified on all issues relating to finance. As we saw, it’s just not true."

And this: "Some individuals 'who in many cases were frankly pretty average' made as much as 10 times that of people in other industries during the financial crisis."

As well as this: "As an industry, we can have larger-than-life personalities, but individuals don’t make institutions."

And, finally, this: "The more you have this hero individual status, and lots of things written about them by journalist friends in the paper, the more likely that they are going to act out, because they start to believe it."

Reporting on Gorman's fighting words, Bloomberg points out that Super G. pulled down $15 million last year for his efforts.