Sympathy for the Devil
Dick Fuld really isn’t such a bad guy.
Sure, he’s at least nominally
responsible for the biggest
bankruptcy scandal in banking
history. He feasted on the
subprime market until it
folded in on itself and ripped
the economy a new bottom
line. He set the tone for a Wall
Street culture that rewarded
ruthlessness and bullish
behaviour with a lifestyle of
tawdry wealth and taste. He
set new standards in ethics-lite
investment practice and paid
himself over $480 million in
his seven years as CEO of
Lehman Brothers Holdings. And when the company tanked,
he washed his hands.
Okay. So he sealed his fate. He was a mover in the credit
crisis and a baron of the subprime loan and now he’s the poster
boy for the global economic meltdown. Maybe he does deserve
to be the target of every Tom, Dick and Henry—Waxman in
this case—with a beef to grind and a box to soap. But there’s
something rank about him being dragged in front of the House
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to be
berated and bullied into apologizing for doing little more than
what he was contracted to do.
It’s not as if people were clueless about the dangers. They
knew the stakes and were willing to risk them, because they saw
the pot of gold at the end of the earnings report. Fuld was given
a mandate to screw the market for every penny he could get.
For six and half years that’s exactly what he did. And he was
loved for it—by the market, the hedge funds, the executives, the
pension plans, the shareholders, and the press. But these aren’t
the fairest of fairweather friends. The instant Lehman Bros.
started to go south, Fuld had to know he was going to wind up
taking it in the neck.
In early 2008, he forwarded a proposal that might have
kept Lehman Bros. out of the knacker’s yard but the investors
flinched and the blitzkrieg raged—bankruptcy, bailout, fire sale,
you name it. Fuld had killed the very company where he had
risen from an intern 42 years earlier to a corporate general’s
rank. And CNN, which had lauded him as the 1 CEO of
2006, put a warrant on his head as one of their 10 Most Wanted:
Culprits of the Collapse.
 



BIG IDEAS FOR A RICHER LIFE
Now, I’m not about to write
a treatise on the nature of greed
or pontificate on the volatility
of the marketplace—not for
the moment anyway. Just take it
on faith that if the free market
thrives on liquidity, growth and
deregulation, then it’s bound
to be fertile ground for a wide
variety of prettily coloured sins,
greed just being the most obvi-
ous. And for every upswing of
fortune, there will be a violent
downturn to balance it out—
free markets go into free fall.
Knowing that doesn’t seem
to make a difference though. That’s what’s puzzling about the
nature of the game. When things start to go wrong, we look for
answers. And by answers, what I mean is someone to blame. Who
better to point a finger at than the cigar-chomping fat cat? But in
our hurry to find the designated villains of the so-called collapse,
it’s easy to forget that Fuld and his Wall Street cronies aren’t so
much the problem as simply the most extreme product of it.
Granted, Dick Fuld probably isn’t a nice guy. In fact, he’s
probably a bit of a bastard—and probably a poor tipper as well.
And it’s damn near impossible to sympathize with someone
who pulled down half a billion dollars while betting against a
market disaster with other people’s money. But that’s what the
CEO of an investment bank does. Men like Fuld capitalize on
risky investments because the companies they work for encour-
age them to. The companies encourage this practice because
the system allows it. The system functions this way because the
governments build them that way. And the government builds
them that way because that’s how people tell them we want
it—that’s what they voted for. New Gillette Dry Skin Hydrator and Body Wash
It’s all just a little too easy to pick on the wheelers and dealers. combines a deep cleanser with 3X the hydrators*
Maybe they are overpaid and self-indulgent. And maybe they for a powerful defence against dry skin. You’ll step
are dangerously reckless and lost in a culture of excess. As long out of the shower feeling like you can take on your day.
as they’re making people money, no one cares whether they’re
unscrupulous opportunists or high-minded philanthropists. But
god forbid they drop the ball and expose us to the vicious flipside
of escalating wealth. No. It can’t all be laid at their door. We’re all
in need of some restraint. Ask me who killed the economy, and
I’d say, after all, it was you and me.
DYLAN YOUNG
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74 Sharp Dec/Jan 2009 SHARPFORMEN.COM ILLUSTRATION: ROCCO COMMISSO