Great program on the Documentary Channel the other night!
It indeed is one of the best documentaries produced after the sub-prime fiasco in the USA in 2008...economies all over the world were impacted.
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| Jail? Nope...not a day spent in jail. |
The filing marked the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.
The
following day, the British bank Barclays announced
its agreement to
purchase, subject to regulatory approval,
Lehman's North American
investment-banking and
trading divisions along with its New York
headquarters building.
On September 20, 2008, a revised version
of that agreement was approved by Judge James Peck."
An entirely different "movie", 76 minutes long, was featured on the Documentary channel, which is the one I watched. Its link is provided at the bottom of the blog, a 3-minute YouTube trailer.
It dealt with the five or six whistleblowers--Lehman Bros employees, one of whom was a Senior Vice President--who were treated abysmally by the company. Slowly but surely their jobs disappeared after they had sought to warn officials of the company that "something was wrong". Slowly but surely their lives were destroyed.
The following relates to the documentary, prefaced:
"Stockton, California. September 2007. I came to investigate the subprime crisis in this dormitory town that owes them everything — its hopes, and its downfall.
Every morning at the hotel, I scanned the record for legal announcements of court-ordered evictions.
I still remember that pencil stroke around the ad.
Arriving in front of the house, the cameraman and I discover a scene that we have seen a hundred times in the cinema: bathed in Californian sun, a little black girl plays on the steps. "Yes, mommy's here. "
The door opens. I introduce myself. "I'm a French journalist. I saw the expulsion notice in the newspaper.” The woman collapses. She had not read the newspaper yet.
I have never forgotten the faces of those who have lost everything through the fault of banks, greedy to the point of reversing the basic rules of credit.
Inside Lehman Brothers is the autopsy of this crime, by those who tried to prevent it from within.
As mortgage brokers for Lehman’s subsidiary BNC, Linda Weekes and her Californian colleagues were at the forefront of the subprime crisis. Matthew Lee, then headquartered in New York, was the first leader to have refused to validate the accounts tainted by fraudulent transactions.
At the time, nobody listened to these whistleblowers.
In 2007 and 2008, other banks, lost by the same greed and were saved by the Fed. On Wall Street, they say Lehman Brothers was "sacrificed.”
It was necessary to make an example, to punish the cowboys of Lehman, to promise that this would not happen again.
Today, banks have recovered their health, and with it, their bad habits. Toxic assets, derivatives — the labels have changed but the mechanisms remain, unlocked by Donald Trump, who hastens to tear down frail safeguards erected by the Dodd-Frank Act. (Also here.)
Worse still, many of the cabinet of advisors around the current President were the ones who drove the system into bankruptcy back in 2008.
The fight of our characters has not aged. But, even today nobody hears them. Inside Lehman Brothers is the result of an investigative survey, conducted by the team for over two years."
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| The CEO of Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld, who apparently lost "$2 billion of HIS OWN money". Ahem |
Here's the 3-minute YouTube trailer clip.
This Orca-Sound article details the gist of the 76-minute film I watched.
It first aired on August 25th.
Crooks.
Crooks who actually had the Securities and Exchange Commission complicit in their "dealings".
Crooks who bankrupted everyday, ordinary people...
Crooks who still haven't gone to jail.
And never will.
Pity.
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