Culture of Deceit: Why Dick Fuld So Needlessly and Recklessly Perjured Himself Before Congress
by ilene - April 30th, 2010 2:59 pm
Culture of Deceit: Why Dick Fuld So Needlessly and Recklessly Perjured Himself Before Congress
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
"Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence."
Henri-Frederic Amiel
Yet another whistle blower who had been completely ignored by the SEC just stepped forward.
A Bloomberg analyst reported around noon NY time that they had verified Mr. Budde’s story, and that indeed Dick Fuld easily had received cash in excess of $500 million in compensation for the period in question, higher than even Henry Waxman had asserted in his charts during Dick Fuld’s testimony.
Mr. Budde, a former counsel who was frustrated and plain fed up with the culture of personal greed and deceit among the Lehman executives stepped forward again to tell his story after being completely ignored by the SEC and the Lehman Board of Directors.
Now, I have some sympathy for Dick Fuld. I mean, when you are making the big bucks owed to a master of the universe, and you eat widows and orphans for breakfast, what does it really matter if it is $300 million, or $550 million, or even the one billion that some estimate was the true total compensation? What is a few hundred millions when you wipe your behind with Cohiba cigars, and gargle with Cristal Brut 1990?(Oh yeah, that’s class, real class. I must finally be somebody, and not just some schmuck from the Bronx. I’ll show them, show them all.)
I know I have trouble keeping track of what I have exactly in my own wallet at times, especially after paying the kids a couple of quid to walk the dog. And $200 million is hardly a significant sum anymore in the rapidly expanding compensation universe change on Wall Street. There is the locus of Bernanke’s inflation, the FIRE sector, where the liquidity has been channeled, for years.
But what interests me most is why did Dick Fuld perjure himself over something so obviously verifiable, and largely irrelevant? Doesn’t he file tax returns? Did he mess up using Turbo Tax like other board members of the NY Fed are said to have done? Or was he just a little bit ashamed of taking huge sums from a company that he ran into the ground in a Ponzi scheme? On the other hand Goldman execs…