articles.latimes.com — The uncompromising report should put to rest the self-serving claims by Lehman that the firm was destroyed by rumors, short selling, stock manipulation and an unwarranted loss of confidence by clients and trading partners. In 2,200 pages, the examiner, Anton R. Valukas, lays out the truth in all its ugly glory: Lehman's fall was 100% its own fault.
Apr 6, 2010 View in Crawl 4
ninhApr 6, 2010
Which, at 20/20 hindsight, makes it perfectly right for the government not to bail them out.
somerandomguyApr 7, 2010
It wasn't a discovery made for the sake of discovery, it was a discovery that was only made to counter Lehman's objections of "We were set up by those evil stock market speculators!"
godwarrior33702Apr 7, 2010
Valukas has dual Israeli/U.S. citizenship. Big surprise that he spreads the Company Line, just like Bush's Zionist lackeys (AKA MASTERS) did after 9/11.
v1rukApr 7, 2010
Republicans and their free market, if they believed that, Bush would have just let them all collapse.
v1rukApr 7, 2010
morality is for sale
Closed AccountApr 7, 2010
@ect5150It's not dissolving their responsibility, but as a money manager, if you can borrow money at a quarter percent and start slamming it into stocks, or real estate, or pretty much anywhere and make a boat load of cash in a short period of time, then a lot of people are going to do it. Eventually, the feeding frenzy becomes self sustaining. The Federal Reserve is supposed to maintain order and balance to the financial markets. In reality, it twists and distorts those markets to benefit the favored(GS) and punish the unfavored(Lehman).
joe8packApr 8, 2010
The important facts that are pertinent to understand is not that it was Lehmans' own damn fault - that is obvious- the real important thing is it was probably due to fraudulent accounting that was known and condoned by upper management. Lehman sold up to 50 billion dollars in bad assets (ie liabilities) to 3rd parties and booked this transaction as a sale - then showed 50 billion in cash (the result of the sale) on their books. After the quarter ended and all accounting reports filed and shareholder reports issued, Lehman bought back the toxic assets as was pre agreed with the 3rd party, thus the 50 billion in cash was not a sale, it was loan and should have been booked as such. These are the "repo105" agreements - repurchase of assets at 105% - they did this for years. They were under the regulatory pervue of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York - which was headed by Timothy Geithner.Geithner did nothing to stop this or to call for criminal investigations.This is fraud, someone should go to jail, indictments should be forthcoming.