This is just one of our articles referencing the financial crisis, crash of the housing market, subprime, and more:

What do Henry Paulson, Charles Prince, and Stephen Green have in common? Obviously it is the ability to say what they wish was true in the face of what they think is true. In other words these executives are front runners for the “quotable quotes” section after their statements fall flat. Shades of Countrywide saying “…we have $45 billion and plenty of liquidity so there is nothing to worry about…”

Chief Executive Charles Prince previously said in early October that he expected the company’s businesses to return to more traditionally normal levels in the fourth quarter. Two weeks ago, however, Citi reported a 57% drop in third-quarter net profit two weeks ago due to recent write-downs for bad loans and other credit issues. The company had revealed on Oct. 1 that it expected a year-over-year drop in net income in the range of 60%. But the write-downs and securities and trading losses ended up being $600 million more than estimated. For HSBC’s Stephen Green there were $10 billion in write downs, a staff of 150 PhD’s, a risk analyst formerly with the OCC, and HSBC theoretically never saw it coming?