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Lehman tales
Over the past two days, we’ve been treated to two long stories in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal focusing on employees of Lehman Brothers, one year after the firm’s chaotic bankruptcy filing. Yawn.
Now, don’t get me wrong–both stories are well reported and well written. I was glad to see that one of the people the Times did a mini-profile on was a former Lehman banker who packaged and sold rotting mortgages and is honest enough to admit he has “blood on my hands.”
But it’s not the Lehman employees I’m really concerned about–even if some of them are feeling remorse now. I’m more concerned about average Americans–and for that matter, average people around the globe–who were impacted by the collapse of Lehman and the collateral damage to the financial system.
A year later, we still don’t read or hear enough stories about the average folks who bought Lehman’s now worthless structured notes, which were pitched as conservative investments. Over the past five years, a Lehman subsidiary in Amsterdam sold some $30 billion of these notes to average investors–many of them retirees–in England, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe.
A year on, it’s still a housing story
Around the time Lehman Brothers’ collapse nearly pushed the global banking system off a cliff, Rose Barrett’s own personal financial crisis began.
Recently separated from her husband, the Kissimmee, Florida resident quickly found it hard to keep making her monthly $1,939 mortgage payment on her salary as a night nurse at a local rehabilitation center. She made a hardship application to her lender, the subprime banking arm of Banco Popular seeking relief from her 40-year fixed rate $200,000 mortgage with a hefty 9.45 percent interest rate.
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The Wall
