“The truth is, through criminal neglect and competence, the people at the
top of these firms chose to look away, to take more risk, to enrich themselves
and to put shareholders and indeed, the country itself and the country’s
economy at risk. It is truly not only a shame, it is a crime” - 60 Minutes
Forget the blame game, forget the justified rants of anger. US taxpayers were asked to risk $700 Billion for a Wall Street bailout that may not even work - but do they really know why?
The rest of the world has been swept up in this crisis, with citizens all over the world afraid their banks are going to shut down - but do they really know why?
I’ll get to the why in a second.
In the meantime, as the world sweats, CEO’s at Lehman, Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie, Freddie, etc., etc. each walked away with tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and stock. Lehman CEO, Richard Fuld, himself walked away with $480,000,000 (yes, 480 million) since 2000. That equates to $60,000,000 per year for a guy that drove Lehman into bankruptcy and significantly contributed to the current crisis.
Yes, Fuld “feels horrible about what happened” but I suspect $480,000,000 goes a long way towards treatment of his horror.
