“..Lehman Brothers: Caught cheating .. again ..”
“.. No question, these are fighting words .. and they suggest that civil law suits against Lehman’s execs are going to keep the likes of Lehman CEO Dick Fuld in court for a long, long time to come.
In the ex post facto analysis of the crisis, one commonly hears that the decision not to bailout Lehman was a mistake —
– that by failing to come to the rescue of the bank, the government precipitated the next fearsome stage of financial sector disintegration.
But when you put together the picture that has emerged through the course of numerous books and congressional hearings, and reports such as the one referenced here ..
.. it seems pretty clear that Lehman deserved to fail.
Could the process have been managed better?
Absolutely.
But Lehman’s woes were also largely of its own making.
I remember watching Dick Fuld appear before a Congressional hearing in October 2008.
At one point, Fuld was asked flat out: Why was Lehman allowed to fail and AIG bailed out?
In a moment of great drama, he furrowed his Olympian brow and said “until the day they put me in the ground, I will wonder.’
But it’s not that complicated.
Lots of people knew that Lehman was playing games with its numbers, even if they didn’t know exactly how.
What they didn’t know was the chain reaction that Lehman’s catastrophic failure would cause.
And Dick Fuld, who was signing off on bogus quarterly statements, has no right to be aggrieved ..
.. not after pocketing hundreds of millions even as his company imploded —
– much of which, we hope, will be squandered in an unsuccessful legal defense.
Barry Ritholtz was one of the Wall Street watchers calling bullshit on Lehman at exactly the time when the bank was cooking the books ..
.. and he was ridiculed by name for it on CNBC.
Ritholtz seized upon the release of the new report as an opportunity to settle some old scores.
The video is instructive .. if only to remind us how complicit the financial press was in the whole charade..”
go to source/story>>Lehman Brothers: Caught cheating, again - How the World Works - Salon.com