And I sense that this will not be the last time.
From CNN/Money:
In the midst of staggering losses and intense public scrutiny, former Citigroup CEO Charles O. Prince III could always count on the support of the company's biggest individual shareholder: Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud. Less than a month ago, the Saudi prince, who owns 3.6% of the company, even dismissed a sharp drop in earnings as a "mere hiccup."
But Fortune has learned that Prince Alwaleed and other major shareholders agreed last week that, if Chuck Prince didn't offer his resignation after the news of the additional $8 billion to $11 billion writedowns, they would publicly call for his ouster. In an exclusive interview, Prince Alwaleed, speaking by phone from the desert outside Riyadh, talked with Fortune's Andy Serwer and Barney Gimbel about the final days of Chuck Prince's tenure at Citigroup.
Okay, let's back up a bit here ...
Ever since the Reagan years, Americans have been told that life would be better for them if they put more and more power over their lives into the hands of private individuals.
We were told, again and again, that The Markets were better stewards of our country and our future than Our Democracy.
So, we slowly but surely turned everything over to The Markets.
The problem is -- the assumption has always been that The Owners in this Marketplace would be Americans and that The Owners would share the same values and goals as the population at large.
We believed that The Owners would be some class of Country Club Republicans, resting tidily -- but not immodestly -- in their larger-than-average houses in Golf Club Communities on the Hill, looking down at us little workers with a sense of noblesse oblige and sympathy.
Oh, how naive we were ...
The Owners are an international class of global rich with no real alliance to any one country. Prince Alwaleed is undoubtedly far more comfortable and happy in his homes in London, New York and Dubai than he is in his native Saudi Arabia. He can and will move his money from country to country, looking for profitable investments and strip-mining economies as long as Globalization lets him.
As we get poorer and poorer, people like him are getting richer and richer, consolidating wealth and power as they go along.
Today, Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia can demand the head of one of America's largest employers.
Tomorrow, what can he ask for and what can he get?