Comments on: A toast to the downfall of Lehman brothers,

By: Jake

Jake — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:47:59 +0000

There will certainly be cases in which it is unfortunate, and for those I feel their pain.. however, there is much to say about a company that hands out $2.5 billion in bonuses after having the largest bankruptcy in history – http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article4795072.ece

By: Jake

Jake — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:47:00 +0000

By: Draano

Draano — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:26:58 +0000

As a former employee of Lehman, I’m glad you enjoyed our misfortune. Not everyone was a banker there, and not everyone was making an outrageous fortune there. I received a better salary in the banking industry than I would have made in my previous job, but if you factored in the 60 – 70 hour high-stress work weeks, my per-hour rate was the same or lower than I received prior to coming to the street. And as you were feeling good about yourself, you weren’t imagining the college funds or savings cushions that evaporated before our eyes while a firmwide moratorium was in place on our trading the firm’s securities, preventing us from getting out 5% of years of the bonus money that was paid in firm stock.

Will you also sit outside families’ houses while they are evicted due to loss of work in this down economy? You better buy a few more cases of wine and prepare to be hammered constantly. Perhaps you’ll be decent enough to share a glass with the departing occupants…

By: Draano

Draano — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:26:00 +0000

By: Ruarri

Ruarri — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:16:12 +0000

point taken – I know someone who joined Lehman 2 months ago and is now out of a job. The problem is that when they signed they got a £40k signing bonus, so losing their job wasn’t such a bad thing – but that signing bonus must have come from somewhere… and perhaps that’s not ‘risk management’ its just from the self-congratulation fund.

yes – a bad economy is bad, and the job losses are awful. hopefully we don’t lose the lesson though. I think an economy that focuses too much on service and self-enrichment and not on building long-term value is a bad thing. Many people at Lehman and on Wall Street didn’t bat an eyelid for people in Katrina and wined about tax-increases…

we need to look at having more ‘green-collar’ jobs – jobs in agriculture, sustaining the environment and building a better future. we’ve just been caught in a little lapse of greed where we all lived credit-fuelled lifestyles and its come back to bite us.

I think that the restaurant and leisute industry may suffer – but we are seeing share prices of Dominoes Pizza and such franchises go up, and subscripitions to Netflix and retail of bottles of wine are also on the increase… a bad economy is not ideal – but people going home to drink a little wine and spend time with the family, and perhaps eat a pizza is not the worst thing either.

By: Ruarri

Ruarri — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:16:00 +0000

By: Doug Cress

Doug Cress — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:39:06 +0000

Despite trying to make as much money as possible, Lehman’s downfall had less to do with greed and more to do with inadequate risk management.

A bad economy (and I know many good people – Lehman employees included – who have have recently lost their jobs) is bad for everyone – including the wine industry.

By: Doug Cress

Doug Cress — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:39:00 +0000

Despite trying to make as much money as possible, Lehman’s downfall had less to do with greed and more to do with inadequate risk management.

A bad economy (and I know many good people – Lehman employees included – who have have recently lost their jobs) is bad for everyone – including the wine industry.