Last week, I got to spend nearly an hour interviewing Jack Welch, the legendary former chairman and CEO of General Electric, in front of an audience of several thousand bankers from around the world. It was a fun and stimulating conversation that ranged from the toughest leadership challenge facing financial institutions (his answer: energizing rank-and-file employees, who used to be the “friendly neighborhood banker” and are now seen as responsible for the country’s economic mess) to the launch, in January 2010, of the Jack Welch Management Institute — basically, his version of the MBA.