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Flashback to March 2010: Mike Bloomberg calls Barclays' Bob Diamond "my friend"

Barclays Chief Executive Bob Diamond, who just resigned in the wake of an interest-rate scandal that also took down his board chairman, may be best known in New York for signing a naming-rights deal for the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

And at the arena groundbreaking 3/11/10, Mayor Mike Bloomberg cozily saluted both Diamond and developer Bruce Ratner as "my friend."



After first hyping the jobs and tax revenues purportedly created by the project, Bloomberg shifted tone to address fellow moguls: "Now I know that Forest City Ratner and my friend, and my neighbor, Bruce, and Barclays, my friend, Bob Diamond, are going to work together to make sure that many of the jobs generated here are going to go right here, to people that already live in this community."

Actually, Barclays was to have nothing to do with the jobs. And Diamond, as we now know, had other things on his mind.

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