How To Pull a Lehman

Well, it looks like Lehman Brothers is on its way to being forever memorialized in verb form, thanks to last week's report. I suspect "Pulling a Lehman" is going to be right up there with "Pulling a Chiang" and getting "

". The truly heroic extents to which the firm went in order to misrepresent their true financial condition will soon be the stuff of legend.

To that end, I found this amusing article: "Top 10 Ways to Pull a Lehman". I know the author wasn't intending the article to be humorous, and people are right to be outraged by Lehman's obfuscation, but the fact is that no one will ever see the inside of a prison cell over this one.

Which brings me to my question. It seems the only time a firm gets caught doing something really sinister and stupid is when it blows up in their face and takes the firm down. I'm speaking specifically about the Repo 105 shell game Lehman was playing. It stands to reason that someone in the firm would have stood up and said, "Hey, wait a minute. This is bullshit." In fact, someone did. His name is Matt Lee and Lehman fired him for raising the bullshit flag.

I guess what I'm wondering is how one of the oldest investment banks on the Street could be so stupid. First, to pull something like Repo 105 and think that it was okay. But even worse, second, when someone called them on it to be stupid enough to fire him and think that the problem is going to go away. Seriously. You're never gonna get that genie back in the bottle. What was the thinking here?

 

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