Dick Fuld, Disgraced Former CEO Of Lehman Brothers, Makes Bizarre Comeback

Dick Fuld, part villain and part unforgivably very confused bystander to the financial crisis in the eyes of most -- and a victim of the financial crisis to himself -- made a bizarre comeback at a conference in midtown New York hotel on Thursday.

In his first public appearance (other than sworn congressional testimony) since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Fuld blamed regulators, borrowers and rumors for the end of the 158-year-old, $47 billion firm he led. It was a “perfect storm” that sank Lehman, not his own leadership or decisions, Fuld said, while touting Lehman’s “success” to the audience. He also claimed that every one of the 27,000 employees who once worked for Lehman had been a risk manager, because they owned stock in the firm.

SEC Giving Up On Lehman Probe, Won't Recommend Any Action

Lehman Brothers did nothing wrong when it booked billions of dollars in phony sales to disguise the true extent of its financial woes.

That, apparently, is the surprising conclusion reached by investigators for the Securities and Exchange Commission. On Thursday, Bloomberg News reported that SEC investigators concluded a three-year probe and determined that it will probably not recommend any enforcement action against Lehman or its former executives. Bloomberg cited an excerpt of an internal agency memo in its report.

An SEC spokesman, however, said the case remains under review. "As the Chairman said, it's still under review and no final decision has been made," John Nester said in an email.

Lehman Docs Show Wall Street Arrogance Led To Financial Collapse

If one wants to understand the full complicity of Wall Street in the Great Recession, look no further than the voluminous package of pre-collapse Lehman Brothers documents that have been made available by the law firm Jenner & Block LLP, which has acted as the coroner in the Lehman post-mortem.

Most important, the cache dispels the myth that Dick Fuld, chief executive officer of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., and his close associates were unaware of the risks their business faced in 2007 and 2008. That would be bad enough, but the more devastating reality is that Fuld and his sycophants were warned repeatedly but were blinded by their hubris.

The records confirm, yet again, that the “forces-out-of- our-control” argument we hear from Wall Street leaders is bunk. It is the ill-advised behavior of one banker after another, day in and day out, that leads to the sort of devastating financial crisis we are only now emerging from.

Lehman Brothers Investigator On 60 Minutes: 'They'd Fudged The Numbers'

Lehman Brothers, the firm that collapsed four years ago causing a global financial crisis, misrepresented its financial health prior to its bankruptcy, according to an investigation by 60 Minutes.

“They'd fudged the numbers,” Anton Vakulas, the attorney appointed by the federal bankruptcy court to investigate Lehman Brothers’ collapse told 60 Minutes' Steve Kroft. “They would move what turned out to be approximately $50 billion of assets from the United States to the United Kingdom just before they printed their financial statements.”

The segment, which marks the first time Vakulas has been interviewed since filing his nine-volume, 2,200-page report two years ago, claims there is sufficient evidence to prosecute officials at Lehman. According to Vakulas, Lehman Brothers was intentionally misrepresenting their financial health.

It wasn’t long before that accounting trick, known as Repo 105, caught the attention of whistleblower Matthew Lee but what happened next -- or rather didn’t happen, may have changed the course of history forever.

Original Article
Source: Huff
Author: Harry Bradford 

Ex-Lehman Brothers Trader: Only On Wall Street Could You 'Get Paid So Much For Doing So Little'

The fallout from the financial crisis has already changed the way much of America views Wall Street. It may also be changing the way the financial industry views itself.

After years of huge paychecks and bonuses, financial industry workers are seeing their compensation capped and cut thanks to anxiety surrounding the global economy and oncoming regulations. But when a salary or bonus can serve as evidence of an accomplishment, it's disappearance can also amount to an erosion of self-worth.

"There's no other industry where you could get paid so much for doing so little," an ex-trader for Lehman Brothers told New York Magazine as part of a piece about the changing dynamics of Wall Street.

Though the former Lehman trader may be one of the first Wall Street workers to express that sentiment in print, he's echoing the views of others. The head of Britain's top financial watchdog has said that what takes place on Wall Street is largely a "socially useless activity," according to a 2010 New Yorker report.