Lehman

Today I got a group email from a graduate school classmate who'd gone to work for Lehman Brothers. Things haven't quite worked out as well as we'd all hoped. Here's what he had to say:

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Hello,

Just wanted to take this opportunity to catch up with everyone and also to say thanks for the phone calls and e-mails of support that I've been getting.

So the Brotherhood of Lehman went bankrupt and Mr. Fuld was scrutinized by Congress and knocked out by one of his own employees. Ironically, I spent half a year fighting faulty systems and accounting to salvage rather large operational losses in our own group. Auditors were threatening to shut down our non-performing loan business! Then, when we finally fixed the losses, the whole stupid firm went under!

Being in a bankrupt firm was an interesting experience. We weren't told very much, so we relied primarily on Bloomberg for the latest updates. Rumors ran rampant. After a while, though, management started to pick up the slack and gave us a few pep talks, but we took it all with a grain of salt by that time, since different groups were given different info right before the bankruptcy. Personally, I'm still skeptical of whatever management tells me, but I understand that we have conflicting interests. They want to keep me in the firm until they're absolutely sure they don't need me, and I'll stop working the moment they tell me that I know I'm being chopped ("Screw you guys! I'm going home!").

People also tend to act differently once bankruptcy is declared. If anything, their true selves appear. For example, I thought my supervisor was a pretty professional guy that cared about the well-being of the team.... but it wasn't really so. He stopped talking to us once the bankruptcy was announced. Not a word... Quite
sad, really. Some of the other managers, on the other hand, started
scrambling to find jobs for their soon-to-be unemployed subordinates, which I thought was terrific.

The funniest thing is that I started to recall all that stuff I learned at JAIMS about Enron, Worldcom, and the stages of bubble creation. The employees in Enron and Worldcom never thought their companies were going to go under... and the Lehman employees said the EXACT same things. "Nah, the Fed will bail us out..., we have enough liquidity to support us for a year..., blah blah..." We certainly
didn't expect things to go so fast. Plus, I didn't see any of that "irrational exuberance" stuff here in Japan.... but then again, Japan never really got into the sub-prime loan-real estate-securitization craze thing.

On the bright side, I've finally found that mythical "work-life balance" thing that people keep on talking about. I figured it was like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster or something, but it certainly exists in bankruptcy. The best part is that I'm still getting paid!

Oh, and idiotically, I got caught on national TV... the day after Lehman went under, the media camped outside our tower. To this day, I still don't know HOW in the world that guy knew I was a Lehman employee, but I got rushed. Before I noticed it, I was surrounded. I ran into the building with them chasing after me, but the damage was done. After talking to a few of my workmates, I was relieved to find out that other people had given much more time to the media than I did. One German guy gave them 5 minutes or so!! I thought for sure that they wouldn't use my footage........ but then they DID! What the heck!? Then I got calls and mails from a bunch of people telling me that they saw me. The German guy and his 5 mins. never made it! Fortunately, the management never watches local TV so I wasn't caught.

Anyway, thanks again to all for your concern, but I'm still alive, well, and employed for the time being. And even though the news is full of doom and gloom, there's always opportunity surrounding us everywhere. It just needs to be discovered and I've just got to make sure that I don't miss it! Life is still good, people!

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Classic.