Essentially, everyone had egg on his face -- but some of the bigger powers had the muscle to save face -- and sink competitors at the same time: which is exactly what Goldman Sachs did to Lehman. Goldman had been placing its cronies in the White House for years -- and it would now go through the White House to see who got bailed out and who did not. AIG got one -- because it owed a large chunk to Goldman (who had figured out the game ahead of time and started betting against itself by buying insurance through AIG). Sorkin's work is a work full of the kind of details that other writer's like Taibbi and Lewis do not take the time to give their readers. Taibbi is more about taking the knife to the jugular. Lewis finds that human element -- that human interest story, such as belongs to Vinny and Eisman. Wessel tries to find it in Bernanke, Geithner, and Paulson -- but there is not much to find there. Their humanitarian efforts were akin to helping everyone sort out his chips at the end of the game in the most orderly fashion. That was all.
Nonetheless, Wessel attempts to put these men in heroic roles in the same way Arthur Miller tries to make a salesman a dramatic hero -- it does not work. What really happened is clear enough, as even Wessel cannot hide: the poker game ended, the crestfallen sat with hanging heads, the ones who still had cigars left lit up; the mood was quiet and deferential -- everyone had to show his cards. Wall Street, the Fed, and the White House all made grim faces at one another, made speeches to the public, and if they were on the winning side, lined their pockets with gold. If you were Lehman, you just went home empty-handed: "On Sunday, September 14, after it became clear that Lehman would not be salvaged, the other big Wall Street firms were told to open their books to one another at the New York Fed" (Wessel 188) (a laughable idea -- Vinny had spent six months trying to understand those same books: the fact was that no one could understand them -- they had been cooked six different ways from Sunday).
However, such actions are typically performed to show the public with what transparency everyone in big places is conducting his affairs. Such nonsense is somewhat propagated by Wessel -- it is not by Lewis. Wessel states the facts blandly in casino terminology and quickly moves on to the political maneuvers that really interest him: "Firms that had bet one way with Lehman could settle up with firms that had bet the other way, reducing the eventual burden on the bankruptcy court. Some did, but not many" (Wessel 188).
Here is the difference between reporting styles: Lewis gives the story behind the story -- illustrating what caused the crash, who was on top of it, who got caught under it, who watched, who prophesied, who ignored. Wessel reports from the other side of the field: his work is information with judgments set aside, even the most basic. While journalists like Taibbi find it hard to control their rage and reflect in their writing the fact that they are beside themselves with anger, Wessel is strangely subdued in his analysis, allowing himself to describe such scenes as the hypocrisy that allowed the meltdown to occur with remove and slight indifference. After all, it would be difficult to cast Bernanke, Geithner, and Paulson in the heroic role were he to take a more critical approach to the narrative -- as...
Lehman Brothers and Risk Management This report examines the Lehman Brothers collapse and discusses issues of investment bank risk management. The report considers factors which contributed to Lehman's failure, from financial engineering as practiced by CEO Richard Fuld and other executives to lax auditing by Ernst & Young to the influence of an industry characterized by excessive risk-taking. In particular, the report focuses on the presence of inherent conflicts of interest,
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