Anthony Mason: Good With Wall Street, Not So Good With Health Care Reform

Anthony Mason, CBS News's business correspondent, had pretty much no idea what was going on in the health care debate, so Imus talked to him about egos on Wall Street.

Imus has begun reading New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin's new book Too Big To Fail, and commented on the personalities involved in the financial crisis, noting, "They've got egos bigger than anyone in Hollywood."

Mason agreed, adding that the CEOs are playing one big chess game with each other. Ten years ago, when he started covering the business beat, Mason spoke with a compensation consultant about the exorbitant salaries paid to Wall Street bigwigs.

"They get into a position where they look at the other guy across the street who is making 40 million dollars a year, and they say, 'I've got to have 41,'" said Mason. "It's not because they need the money or can even spend the money, it's because they're simply looking at their rival on the other side of town, and they want to beat him."

As for the notion that Lehman Brothers lost trillions of dollars of wealth seemingly overnight, Mason chalked that up to a loss of "trust and faith."

"That's what disappeared," he said. "So much of the whole financial system is based on confidence...the confidence that a trade is going to go through, and you're going to get your money back, et cetera."

Imus likened such confidence to believing in Jesus. It reminded him the Gospels, which he read years ago.

"There's an introduction where they caution you that before you read all of these things...you are going to have to accept it on faith," said Imus. "And you have to understand that the Gospel-ers wrote these things 70, 80, 90 years after Jesus died."

He paused. "That's pretty much where we are, isn' it?"

Mason laughed, noting that some confidence has returned to the market, but certainly not all. "It's still a little wobbly," he said.

For the bulk of his business news, Imus relies on the biting, physical humor of Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone, who does "fat jokes about Larry Summers and other people," thus reaching (or stooping to) a level that grabs Imus's attention.

We should all aim so high (or low).

-Julie Kanfer