Sep 16 2013
Five Years After Lehman Collapse, Formers Managers are Living It Up on Wall Street
It was five years ago yesterday that historians will look back and say was the day the Great Recession officially began. The financial services firm, Lehman Brothers, publicly imploded, sparking the crisis that 99% of Americans are yet to recover from.
But Wall Street has bounced back, with many firms sitting on billions of dollars in cash while keeping a tight lid on payroll increases. Wall Street hedge funds that claimed Lehman’s failed assets after the bankruptcy filing are now minting billions in profits according to the Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile, after months of investigations, the Securities and Exchange Commission quietly ended its inquiry into the reasons why Lehman collapsed and fined or sanctioned not a single individual. The statute of limitations on prosecuting anyone for Lehman’s questionable practices, is about to expire and it looks like no one will ever be held responsible for the spark that triggered the Great Recession.
Five years after the Lehman Brothers collapse, where are the CEOs, top executives, and senior managers today? A report by the Huffington Post finds that many are back in Wall Street firms, earning incomes that put them firmly into the category of the reviled 1%.
GUEST: Ben Hallman, senior financial writer at The Huffington Post, based in New York. He was formerly a business and finance reporter at The Center for Public Integrity
Click here to read Ben Hallman’s article.
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