Ken Langone On CNBC

Ken Langone, former Home Depot co-founder and well-known business figure involved in the NYSE-Grasso mess, is on CNBC this morning.

Langone is truly irrepressible. He cannot be censored.

Among the gems he uttered this morning, surely the best was part of an unrehearsed, long soliloquy in reply to Elliot Spitzer's return to public media on CNBC last week.

After commenting on how evil and power-mad Spitzer had been as NY AG, and how Spitzer appears not to have learned his lesson, nor changed whatsoever, from his fall, Langone finished by saying, of Spitzer,

"The tragedy is, he was born on third base and thought he hit a triple."

In discussing Bill Ackman's campaign to replace as much of the board of Target as possible, Langone argued that boards have the power they need, often simply lacking the will and courage to do whats right. But he also remarked,

'Shareholders have the ultimate power- they can sell their shares.'

I use single-quotes, because that may not be exactly word for word what Langone said, but it is within a word of being precise.

This reinforces my own view. That is, you can complain all you want about corporate governance, and you can try to change the board. But in the end, each and every shareholder has the ultimate power- just sell the stock.