by Patricia Sellers

Ted Dimon Sr. started a new job yesterday.

Not just any job. Formerly a broker at Merrill Lynch, Dimon joined the brokerage unit of JPMorgan Chase (JPM). His son happens to be CEO of the parent company.

Word is, Jamie Dimon steered clear of the deal to hire his 78-year-old dad, who arrived with five other Merrill brokers in tow. According to people close to father and son, Ted Dimon Sr. initially reached out to Barry Sommers, the CEO of Bear Stearns Private Client Services, in the spring of last year, after JPMorgan Chase bought Bear on the cheap as the Wall Street firm was collapsing. Talks revved up in the past four months, as Merrill has been adjusting to its own integration into Bank of America (BAC) and new leadership under former Citigroup (C) exec Sallie Krawcheck.

It’s been musical chairs across the industry lately. (The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that UBS’ (UBS) new wealth management boss, Bob McCann, who hails from Merrill, is hiring a team of top guns from his old firm.) For the elder Dimon, the rhythm could not be more different at 277 Park Avenue, where his office is directly across the street from his son’s. (“As I look from the third floor over Park Avenue, I have a bird’s-eye view of when Jamie gets in the morning,” Dimon Sr. said through a JPMorgan spokesman this morning.) Whereas BofA Merrill Lynch employs 14,979 financial advisors (as brokers like to be called), JPMorgan’s Bear operation is a boutique with just 380 such salespeople. Jamie Dimon, who is 53, wants to expand the business, though. He’s talked about upping the number to 1,000.

We hoped to chat with Ted Sr., but he’s apparently too busy building client assets. (He started his new job on the day the Dow hit a 13-month high.) We do have a sense of how the father-son dynamic will work at JPMorgan Chase. In Last Man Standing, the recently released biography of Jamie Dimon, author Duff McDonald says that when Ted Sr., the son of Greek immigrants who became a stockbroker 50 years ago, was working for Salomon Smith Barney under Jamie and Sandy Weill, “there might be a company name on his business card, but Ted Dimon Sr. reported to no one.” He was a “free agent,” and Jamie confirmed that “he would never say I was his boss.”

It was Ted Sr. who introduced Jamie and Sandy Weill decades ago when Jamie was a teenager and the families socialized together. If you’re familiar with the Shakespearean saga that followed, you probably know that Jamie wrote an economics paper at Tufts University, where he went to college,  about the 1974 merger of Hayden Stone (Weill’s company) and Shearson, Hammill (where Ted Sr. worked). Impressed with Jamie’s analysis, Weill hired the brash whiz kid to work for him.

And they went on to assemble the financial-services empire that became Citigroup. Their relationship unraveled over personal rivalries and jealousies. Weill fired Dimon. And Dimon went on to be CEO of Bank One and then, in 2005, JPMorgan Chase.

Now Ted Dimon is staking his future at JPMorgan, which outranks Citigroup, BofA, and even Goldman Sachs (GS) in stock-market capitalization. No dummy, that Dimon.

My Fortune colleague Carol Loomis passed on this YouTube video of a talk that Morgan Stanley (MS) CEO John Mack delivered last week at Wharton. It’s a remarkably candid play-by-play of living through the global economic meltdown.

Mack talks about being pushed by Tim Geithner, then head of the New York Fed, to do a deal with JPMorgan Chase (JPM) or Citigroup (C) or another partner that might stabilize the teetering firm and, with it, the cratering financial system.

Mack refused to be told what to do. As he says in the video, “Stand up for what you believe in. Do what you think is right. Be prepared to suffer the consequences. But don’t be pushed around when you know in your heart of hearts it’s the wrong thing to do.” He and Morgan Stanley survived by lining up a $9 billion investment from Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. And Morgan Stanley turned out to be one of two survivors, along with Goldman Sachs (GS), among the Wall Street giants.

Carol doesn’t mind–and I hope Mack doesn’t either–my sharing an email that she wrote to him this afternoon…and his prompt reply:

Loomis: I just watched your Wharton talk on YouTube. This is one of the best 26 minutes I have ever spent. I predict you will soon have more hits on
YouTube than Susan Boyle.

Mack: Carol, Thanks, but I would prefer to listen to Susan Boyle. John

P.S. Click here to see the video and read about Mack’s “Inside the Bunker” talk on Wharton’s website.

I know lots of executives in the banking industry, but I had never heard of Cindy Armine. Until, that is, a couple of months ago when I had lunch with Armine, who is the chief compliance officer at Citigroup (C). Several things blew me away: her humble beginnings (she didn’t go to college), her amazing trajectory (from clerk to top cop), her candor about her flaws as a manager–and her eagerness to fix them. Armine, 48, agreed to share her story in this Postcards Guest Post. “The Art of Boxing in High Heels” has something to do with shoes. But it’s really about raising your game–wise advice to any manager, male or female.

by Cindy Armine, Chief Compliance Officer, Citigroup

Photo courtesy of Citigroup

Three years ago, I decided to reinvent myself–I guess because I hadn’t put a lot of thought into inventing myself at the get-go. I’m not your typical C-suite executive. I grew up in a Sicilian-American working-class family. My dad was a New York City detective and my mom was a waitress. So as you can imagine, college was not in the cards. I was expected to get married right out of school. My career “plan” was to be the next George Martin or Sam Phillips–a famous record producer.

I was 18, in 1980, when the dream burst. My engineering job at a New York City recording studio was leading nowhere. So I interviewed to be a clerk in Smith Barney’s compliance department–because my mother worked as a waitress in a coffee shop in Smith Barney’s building downtown.

I got the job and threw myself into my work. Compliance–which basically ensures that a business follows all laws and regulations–requires a mix of discipline, ability to adapt quickly, and willingness to wear lots of hats: trusted advisor, problem solver, diplomat. I dutifully multitasked and I thrived. Over the years, I moved up to Chief Compliance Officer at Smith Barney, and then at parent Citigroup’s U.S. Corporate & Investment Bank and Global Wealth Management unit.

In 2005, I was nearing my annual performance review and thinking what kind of leader I wanted to be–vs. what kind of leader I was. I had the brawn and the brains. But I realized that as a senior leader who was now (gulp) a role model, I should focus not just on results but on the people who help me get them. I decided I needed to be a kinder, gentler me. So I hired a coach.

As I thought about my reinvention, I was inspired by my mother: She had changed course after a fractured wrist ended her career as a waitress. She became a bookkeeper–a lucky break, so to speak. When my new executive coach finished interviewing a range of colleagues, he said to me, “You’ve got a great knockout punch. Let’s see if you can box.” OK, I thought, I can change course too.

Over the next year, we worked on my “boxing” skills–learning to pause, count to 10, and harness my take-charge style. I learned when to step in–and when to hold back. And when to let others take the lead. Really, I learned a lot about empowering others and reinforcing the value of their work.

And I became a better manager–and a new person in other ways. I realized I needed an outlet for the energy that I used to channel into my knockout punches, so I started exercising. I lost 45 pounds.

You have to understand, I’m five-foot-two. And while the weight loss made me feel terrific, I was concerned, in a strange way, about losing my presence. And so, as I found myself preparing to interview for the top position in Compliance at Citi, I did something totally out of character. I wore high heels.

I had not worn high heels in more than 20 years. Their impact was revelatory. These shoes did the same thing for me, psychologically, as the weight loss. That moment I put on my Ferragamos, I was confident. I was totally comfortable with the “new” me.

I got the job. And I’ve been on a shoe spree ever since.

So now, I confess, I have more than 30 pairs of high-heeled shoes. Recently, I gave a beautiful pair of vintage Hermes heels to my mentee. I told her about that fateful day when I threw on my pair of heels and that I wanted her to have the shoes as a reminder: No matter where you are in your life or career, you can learn to box–and all the better in high heels.

by Patricia Sellers

Lloyd Blankfein hasn’t loved buddying up to Washington this past year. After accepting–and repaying–$10 billion in TARP funds to help rescue the global financial system, the Goldman Sachs (GS) CEO has had to raise his presence in D.C., as well as in the press, to defend the firm’s record profits and opulent pay. “We went from a bankrupt model to ‘too big to fail,’” said Blankfein, referring to Goldman’s scuffed image, in an interview this morning with Fortune managing editor managing editor Andy Serwer.

Blankfein, you would think, would want little more to do with D.C. But apparently he’s thinking otherwise. When asked if he is planning to take a job in Washington after Goldman, the CEO responded with a story about advice he received when he made managing partner at the firm 21 years ago. “A majordomo told me, ‘You should think of your career this way. If someone writes a nine-paragraph obituary, make sure that no more than two paragraphs are about Goldman Sachs.”

The “majordomo” was Jon Cohen, who is now an advisory director at Goldman and back then was a right-hand man to the late John Weinberg.

Without mentioning “Government Sachs,”–the nickname used by people who contend that Goldman has gotten favorable treatment from regulators–Blankfein went on to tick off a list of former Goldman colleagues who have gone on to big government positions: former Treasury Secretaries Hank Paulson and Bob Rubin, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, and Steve Friedman and John Whitehead. “All had second, if not third acts, in their careers,” Blankfein noted.

Not that the Goldman chief is going anywhere soon. He just turned 55 and probably has at least left five years running Wall Street’s mightiest firm. But given that he supported Hillary Clinton and then Barack Obama for President, it’s conceivable if the Democrats hold power: Blankfein for Treasury Secretary in 2016?

by Patricia Sellers

Maybe it’s a sign of recovery in the financial services industry: Wall Street’s two most renowned women dropouts have settled on what to do next. Yesterday on Postcards, you read Sallie Krawcheck’s bizarre tale of her bumpy road on the way to Bank of America (BAC). Today, news broke that former Morgan Stanley (MS) co-president Zoe Cruz is starting a hedge fund.

Cruz, who spent her entire career at Morgan Stanley (starting as a summer associate in 1981), got fired by CEO John Mack almost two years ago, taking the hit for the firm’s huge trading losses. This morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that she has begun recruiting employees for her new firm, to be called Voras Capital Management. The name refers to a mountainous region near where Cruz grew up in Greece.

Famouly press-shy, Cruz declined to talk about her plans. In fact, she has not spoken publicly for many years–except for one interview that she did with me in September 2007, shortly before her ouster at Morgan Stanley. Cruz told me then that she never planned her career. “When you don’t plan, things are easier,” she said. She was interested in one thing, she explained: “Leading an organization to be No. 1.”

Now hoping to launch her hedge fund with at least $200 million, Cruz is starting from scratch for the first time in her life. That name, Voras, suggests where she hopes her business will go: “Voras” is Greek for “north.”

by Patricia Sellers

Sallie Krawcheck

A hot job offer dangles before you. How do you know if it’s right? Sometimes you feel it in your gut. And sometimes you get a big, bloody warning sign. Like Sallie Krawcheck did before she opted to join Bank of America (BAC).

Krawcheck, the former Citigroup (C) star who joined BofA in August to head its Global Wealth and Investment Management unit, told a story last evening in an on-stage conversation with my Fortune colleague Carol Loomis at Manhattan’s Museum of American Finance. While she ducked all questions about who might replace departing BofA CEO Ken Lewis (she’s rumored to be in the running, but she’s a longshot), Krawcheck had the audience rolling as she talked about another job that she almost took–until things went awry.

This other job, explained Krawcheck, 44, was “a leadership opportunity at a troubled financial-services company.” The initial meeting with the prospective employer required a flight out of New York. “For the first time in my life, I overslept and almost missed the plane.” No time for a shower, she threw on her clothes. “I think my pajamas were on underneath,” she said.

She thought to herself: “This doesn’t feel very good.”

Krawcheck made it to the meeting, however, and it went well. The second meeting took place, conveniently, in Manhattan. This was a beautiful spring day. Wearing a new suit and new shoes, she recalled, “I couldn’t have been feeling more pleased with myself.”

That is, until Krawcheck, while walking down Madison Avenue to her meeting, caught the heel of her new shoe in a crack in the sidewalk.

“I went flying down onto a grate,” she said. “I stood up, spit out a tooth. Blood was everywhere.”

Still, she was determined: “I can make the meeting. I can make the meeting!”

“I did not make the meeting. Nor did I eat solid food for the next six weeks.”

“I ended up with six stitches, one broken tooth, a hairline jaw fracture, a dislocated jaw and whiplash.”

Yes, the meeting happened, eventually. In fact, the fit between Krawcheck and this financial-services company seemed ideal. She accepted the job offer.

And then, when she went to sign the employment agreement, “I promptly threw up. And I thought, I don’t think this is right for me.”

And that’s how Sallie Krawcheck, No. 30 on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in Business list, passed up one big opportunity before accepting another at BofA.

“I would give up all the money I have if I could be 50. You can always make money.”

–David Rubenstein, managing director of the Carlyle Group, in the New York Times. One of America’s more low-key buyout kings, Rubenstein celebrated his 60th birthday last month, prompting him to reflect that “I could be like the pharaohs and say, ‘Bury me with my money.’ Or I could start giving it away.” The billionaire recently gave $10 million to Lincoln Center, one of  the 30 major institutions he serves with his time and money.

Rubenstein’s giving philosophy reminded us of another big giver: In 2008, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg was the largest individual philanthropist, donating $235 million (even more than the $205 million he gave in 2007). The best measure of a philanthropist is that the check to the undertaker bounces, Bloomberg said. –Jessica Shambora

Addendum: Morgan Stanley sources say that Wallid Chammah, widely viewed and ID’d below as a contender to be CEO of Morgan Stanley, took himself out of the race a year ago, after he and his family moved to London. James Gorman’s rivals for the top job, in fact, were outsiders. Spencer Stuart recruiter Tom Neff gave the board a list of names known to include  usual suspects such as ex-Merrill Lynch chief John Thain, former Wachovia CEO Bob Steel, and BlackRock (BLK) chief Larry Fink.

John Mack is passing on the reins at Morgan Stanley (MS). The new CEO will be James Gorman, who will take charge at year-end, the company announced this afternoon. An Aussie who spent much of his career at McKinsey and Merrill Lynch (BAC), Gorman, 51, is currently Morgan Stanley’s co-president, overseeing the asset management businesses, plus operations and technology.

In what had shaped up to be a two-man succession race–at least as it came down to Morgan Stanley’s inside players–Gorman beat co-president Wallid Chammah, who is newly named chairman of Morgan Stanley International.

For Mack, who will turn 65 in November, now is hardly the time to leave Wall Street triumphantly–by virtue of the simple fact that heroes hardly exist there anymore. Mack, a never-say-die chief executive, brought Morgan Stanley back from the brink a year ago, however, when he talked with both Citigroup (C) CEO Vikram Pandit and Wachovia’s (WFC) then-chief, Bob Steel, about survival by merging. “I’m not thinking about selling the firm,” Mack told me last September. “I’m thinking about investing in the firm in a big way.”

With Morgan Stanley stock diving below $7 a share, Mack hung on for dear life, raised capital, and bought a big stake in Citi’s Smith Barney unit. Morgan Stanley has not made money this year–in July, it posted its third consecutive quarter of losses. And Mack’s risk-taking swagger has suffered lately as he’s avoided the kinds of bets that have paid off big for the other surviving Wall Street firm, Goldman Sachs (GS). But Morgan Stanley has stabilized and the shares now sell for $28.64.

Mack’s storied career proves that a high-powered executive can falter and come back. I chronicled his struggles in “The Trials of John Mack” in 2003. That story is about Mack’s painful departure from Morgan Stanley in 2001 (when he left the firm after 27 years, amidst disagreements with then-CEO Phil Purcell) and his bumpy run at Credit Suisse (CS). Mack was later pushed out by the board there, and he returned, to Morgan Stanley in 2005. Little did he imagine the history-making run he’d endure this time. In a few months, after ceding the CEO role to Gorman, he’ll remain as chairman.

by Jessica Shambora

If 2009 has a buzz word, it’s “transparency.”

The consensus is that we got into this mess because a lot of people didn’t know what they were signing up for: adjustable rate mortgages, arcane investment vehicles, credit cards with hidden fees. People didn’t know because the products were too complicated to understand. Or they weren’t transparent. Or both.

We’ve written about this here on Postcards: Sallie Krawcheck, ex-Citigroup (C) and now the boss of Bank of America’s (BAC) global wealth and investment management arm, rails against this racket of making financial products too complicated. (“If you can make them complex enough, then it’s difficult to copy them,” she says, explaining big business’s motivation). She calls for greater simplicity and transparency to level the playing field for consumers and investors.

The Internet can help level the playing field too. Last week, I met with the Peter Pham, the CEO of BillShrink.com, a Redwood City, Calif.-based start-up that aims to bring transparency to all your hard-to-figure-out bills. Research shows that 80% of people overpay for credit-card and cell-phone services. BillShrink claims to have found savings of $225 million for the site’s 650,000 U.S. visitors in July.

Pham, who was an early employee and head of biz dev at Photobucket, a photo sharing site that News Corp. (NWSA) acquired in 2007, explains the appeal: “The idea is that you don’t have to ask yourself when you get your bill, ‘Am I getting ripped off?’”

Compare mobile phone plans at BillShrink.com

BillShrink, which raised $8 million from Bessemer Venture Partners and Trinity Ventures, started chasing the problem last year, focusing first on cell phone bills. You might have seen T-Mobile (DT) spokeswoman Catherine Zeta-Jones on TV, offering wireless customers “mobile makeovers.” Those makeovers come courtesy of BillShrink.

Using algorithms that monitor more than 10 million wireless plan combinations, BillShrink analyzes your phone bill to tell you which plan and phone give you the best value. BillShrink provides the service to you for free. The company gets a commission for its referrals–which, CEO Pham vows, are unbiased.

If you try BillShrink, you’ll get all kinds of data about your cell-phone behavior. For example, I learned that 72% of my minutes are spent calling the same five numbers. (You lucky people know who you are.) I also learned that I talk most often at 8pm (when I’m walking home from the subway after work).

After it offers this analysis, BillShrink gives you a list of cell-phone plans and shows you how much you’ll save by switching, taking into account the cost of breaking your contract with your current carrier. It turned out that based on my habits, T-Mobile does have the best plan for me. But as soon as I used the filters to tell BillShrink that I have an iPhone and am therefore married to AT&T (T), I got word that I was already on the best plan.

Eager to tap new markets, Pham has expanded BillShrink into tracking more than 200 credit cards, to make sure you’re not getting taken advantage of there. The BillShrink site has a “Credit Card Bill of Rights” that reflects new credit card legislation (some went into effect last week) and tells you if your cards are complying.

A “gas station” comparison tool is in beta. Next up: Savings & CDs. BillShrink won’t stop trying to help you until you understand exactly what you’re signing up for. Making the right choices from there is all up to you.

“I saw it as gonzo, over-the-top writing that some people might find fun to read. I was shocked that others saw it as being supporting evidence that Goldman Sachs had burned down the Reichstag, shot the Archduke Ferdinand and fired on Fort Sumter.”

- Goldman Sachs (GS) chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein in “The Rage Over Goldman Sachs” in this week’s Time magazine. Blankfein is talking about last month’s damning story about Goldman in Rolling Stone. For a guy who thinks hard about the image that he and his firm project (see Blankfein’s Best Advice), he sure isn’t cutting many breaks. Just read today’s page 1 story in the Wall Street Journal charging that Goldman favors big clients in divvying out stock tips.

This week’s Time story, however, goes a long way toward humanizing the world’s most powerful investment banker—a supremely quirky fellow who grew up poor in Brooklyn, made it to Harvard at 16, and didn’t refashion himself for Fortune 500 leadership until mid-career.

At heart, as Time (and Fortune) writer Bill Cohan notes, Blankfein is a trader who believes that the best of his kind are risk-takers who recalibrate better than others do. “The best traders are not right more than they are wrong. They are quick adjusters,” Blankfein says. Now, as the populist ire against Goldman endures, Blankfein is readjusting nonstop.