Steven Pearlstein:

We know each other. And I was having breakfast.

And I picked up the phone and somebody said: "That was the stupidest column I ever read."

And I said: "Good morning, Jamie. How are you?"

And we had a frank discussion. At the end of it, I said: "Look, why don't you have a dinner somewhere? You can come in here. I will host one here. Or we will do it in New York, and you have some of your guys and I will have some of the other journalists there."

And the reason was because he thought we journalists were misportraying this issue, that he said: "We don't run our companies in the ruthless, profit-maximizing way that you suggest."

And I said: "Well, first of all, I'm not sure that's always the case, but even if it were, then why don't you just say that is not the — that that shouldn't be the norm??

And he didn't really have an answer for that. And that's sort of what — what — eventually, we did have this meeting in New York in his office, and we hashed things around.

And I think, you know, we acknowledge that, no, they don't all run their companies in a ruthless way 100 percent of the time. And he acknowledged that maybe they needed to think about reframing the purpose of a corporation.