Danny Schechter - ColdType

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stature and this whatever was good enough to get a loan.
Like he was the determining factor, and it’s like a flea on his
back, floating down underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, getting
a hard-on, saying, “Raise the bridge.” This guy thinks he’s
got a big dick. He’s got nothing, except maybe a boyfriend.
The week after Bear went down, Cayne, who reportedly
spent ten of 21 work days playing golf and competing in a
bridge tournament in Tennessee, cashed out at Bear where he
had one time owned stock work $1 billion.
He was left with just $61 million. He then closed on an
apartment at the New York Plaza at a reported all cash cost of
$26 million. He needed no mortgage.
Many of the mysteries of what happened to Bear are still
popping up, as this question posed to former Treasury Secretary
Henry S. Paulson in the New York Times Deal Book column
suggests:
You famously encouraged JPMorgan to offer only $2 a
share for Bear Stearns in the name of moral hazard, so as to
punish the Bear Stearns shareholders. Similarly, your actions
with JPMorgan appeared to reflect a desire for shareholders to
bear the costs of any “bailout.” Can you explain why shareholders
were the focus of your efforts, rather than management, who
actually made the decisions that set the stage for the crisis?
Could all this pressure on Lehman have been orchestrated
by still unknown self-interested speculators? Lehman CEO
Dick Fuld had publicly warned that his firm was being targeted
by the same shadowy strategy that brought down Bear
Stearns/. He was suggesting that while the crisis may have
been real, there were sophisticated outside traders or investors,
possibly insiders, taking advantage of the company’s selfinflicted
problems.
Web of Debt author Ellen Brown, who writes about the
economy, also argues that Lehman was pushed and did
not fall in its own on the website, Huffington Post. http://