Documents released in May 2012 regarding Dick Fuld at Lehman Brothers prove that he was aware of the high risk involved in holding so much real estate (and related security derivatives). This means definitively that “the ‘forces-out-of- our-control’ argument we hear from Wall Street leaders is [self-serving] 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.”[1]
The full essay is in Essays on the Financial Crisis, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.
1. William Cohan, “Lehman Docs Show Wall Street Arrogance Led to Financial Collapse,” The Huffington Post, May 7, 2012.