No, the “gorilla” of Wall Street is not in jail. Asked why he didn’t just ride into the sunset’, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers responded, “Why don’t you bite me?”
And those, ladies and gentlemen, are the words of a Wall Street bank’s CEO explaining why he has no regrets even though he oversaw Lehman Brothers during the biggest bankruptcy in this country’s history and played a rather large role in the financial collapse of 2008.
You, of course, might feel otherwise.
Breaking his seven year silence to speak at the Gandy Hyatt hotel in Midtown Manhattan, Richard Fuld Jr (Dick Fuld) played fast and loose with the truth and wished for better days. Days when he and his kind were making risky bets on the backs of the American people with no regulation in sight. You know, before the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc.
Watch here:
A very angry and self-pitying Dick, also known as the “Gorilla of Wall Street”, didn’t want to discuss his part in the biggest bankruptcy in the U.S. Instead of being accountable, Fuld blamed the Federal Reserve for his failures and greed with subprime mortgages, and ultimately laid blame on policy makers instead of the banks.
So he’s learned a lot.
The New York Times had this takeaway:
In the end, Mr. Fuld seemed hung up on the fate of his own firm, not the broader crisis that its bankruptcy helped ignite.
“Please understand, not a day goes by when I don’t think about Lehman Brothers. Not a day,” he said. “I’d love to tell you I’m over it, it’s behind me. It doesn’t happen. But having said that, I do have to move on.”
Bizarrely, though, while whining about how we need “new leadership”, he also blamed the Republican idealized situation of lack of regulations for his failures, “There was very little regulation or market supervision.” Translation: Someone should have stopped me!
Also at fault, that pesky Federal Reserve again for raising interest rates, because HELLO, all over-paid executives know that interest rates never change.
Fuld blamed easy credit and the “government’s push” to own homes (so he’s blaming Bush?), but he turned around and pulled a fast one, using small business as his “Trojan Horse” (to use Hillary Clinton’s term) to concern troll over too much regulation. Dick said the banks won’t lend to small businesses and that’s why the economy is bad. Now what do you suppose would fix this problem? Just take a wild guess.
Hint: Easy credit. You know, the thing that he says caused this problem, and the thing that made him very wealthy.
Mr. Fuld is worried about YOU! Specifically, you and income inequality. Sure, he got his, he made about $529 million between 2002-2007 and he wasn’t so worried about income inequality then. But perhaps he’s changed. If Dick cared about the little people and their businesses, you’d think he would have mentioned the 27,000 or so employees who lost their jobs due to his greed and failure to make good choices. But no mention of their devastation.
But Fuld is very worried about Iran’s nuclear capacity and Russia and claimed that the economy was not nearly as healthy as the stock markets might suggest. This must be why he thinks we need “new leadership”. Apparently Dick has a higher estimation of his cred about the real state of the economy than others do.
Dick sees himself not as he is, but as a movie icon from bygone times. He’s Rocky, y’all. “What did Rocky say? ‘It’s not how hard you hit but whether you get up after you’ve been knocked down.’ I love Rocky.” I guess that makes the American people Rocky’s punching bag.
Dick Fuld was not repentant or humble or even always aware of reality, referring to Lehman in the present tense at least once. Dick Fuld sounded like an unpleasant mixture of a petulant teenager blaming mommy and a bitter man with a bad memory, fussing over his hurts while cherry picking reality.
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