Wriston was in cryptography in WWII, and was also on of the Neal Stephenson's "informants" on finance when he was researching Cryptonomicon. If you ever read his stuff during the dot-com years, he sounded pure financial cypherpunk. Cheers, RAH -------- <http://forbes.com/2005/01/21/cz_sf_0121wriston_print.html> Forbes Obituary Walter B. Wriston: A Remembrance Steve Forbes, 01.21.05, 6:59 PM ET Walter Wriston Add To Tracker Walt Wriston, former Chairman and CEO of Citicorp/Citibank, was also a founding director of Forbes.com and served until last year. Our revenues would never have equaled what Citicorp took in every few minutes, but to Walt, that did not matter at all. He was, at heart, an innovator, an entrepreneur, an original thinker and a man who delighted in getting things done. He quickly grasped the promise of the Internet and never lost faith in its possibilities in the aftermath of the high-tech bubble. The fact that there would be setbacks and excesses in the field were to him part of the normal course of events in a free market. They never made him lose sight of how powerful an instrument the Internet is. He understood, as few others did, how fundamentally vital is the spread of information. The willingness to pioneer by pursuing and investing in new technologies and going into areas where others wouldn't tread -- or had tread and faltered -- was how this man truly revolutionized American and global banking. The word "revolution" has been grossly over-used, but what Wriston did for finance was just that -- a revolution. Until the 1960s, banking was a backwater. A handful of hours each day was more than sufficient to handle one's responsibilities. Commercial bankers were risk-averse. They were stodgy. They didn't want to be bothered with consumers -- that was for savings banks, not commercial banks. The government told banks what interest rates they were allowed to pay on deposits. Before Walt was through, he almost single-handedly turned banking from the equivalent of a small, sleepy town into a hyper-energetic, New York-like metropolis. Under his leadership, Citibank pioneered automatic-teller machines. It pursued the credit card business in a way that no other bank was doing at the time. He constantly battered government regulations. He expanded internationally at a dizzying pace. Old constraints on banks were consigned to the dustbin of history. Walt made what is now called Citigroup the world's leading financial institution. Because he was not risk-averse, he made his share of mistakes. But these were minute compared to his monumental achievements. Walt was a delight to be around. He believed passionately in free markets. His insights were almost always original and profound. Our board meetings were always productive and stimulating. Walt was both an intellectual and a restless doer. My only regret is that he was never given the reins to run our Treasury Department or the Federal Reserve. Now that would have been a sight to behold! In the end, however, Walt Wriston achieved far, far more than have those who have held these kinds of public sector posts. We have lost a truly remarkable man. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'