"For Lehman's Employees, the Collapse is Personal . . ."

A year has gone by. Last year it started on 08/08/08 and this year the echoes grew too loud to ignore on 09/09/09. A year ago Lehman, like Lana Turner in 1959, collapsed. This year the memories grow strong in such headlines as these:

"Lehman Died So Global Finance Could Live": The New York Times [9/12/09]
"Tales from Lehman's Crypt: The New York Times [9/13/09]
"Lessons of Lehman" adjacent to "The Marjuana Paradox": cover of New York [September 21, 2009]
"Lessons from Lehman": Bloomberg [9/ 15 / 09]
"Welcome to Lehman Brothers, You're Fired!" Reuters, [9 /14, 2009]
"The Day Lehman Died": FoxBusiness.Com [9/14/09]
"The Day That Lehman Died": BBC World Drama [9/14/09]
And too many others to list here. . .

Coming soon to this blog, we shall bring you, inspired by these headlines and teasers, Lehman: The Afterlife. For now, we nostalgically bring back this report, written a year ago in collaboration with Lazarus Frere (and posted in the special "Poets and Artists" issue of Oranges and Sardines, ed. Didi Menendez):

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For Lehman's Employees, the Collapse is Personal [9/ 12 / 08]

A sampling of today's headlines:
"City Bracing for Lehman's Demise": The New York Sun
"Should You Dump Lehman Or Is It Too Late?": CNBC
"Lehman's Assurances Ring Hollow": The New York Times
"For Lehman Employees, the Collapse is Persona" [The New York Times]
"Lehman's Long Weekend": US News and World Report
"Lehman's Worst Gamble Ever": Motley Fool

What a day, Lehman said, rolling out of bed. The Sun reported that the whole city was bracing for his demise. "Commercial real estate may take hit." Lehman resisted the impulse to tell the Sun guy that when the Sun goes down, which is inevitable, the city will probably not go into mourning and property values will almost certainly remain unaffected.

Both CNBC and the Times were looking into Lehman's personal life. Goddamn journalists. The stock jock on the TV was saying it was already too late to "dump" him. Like any jilted lover he tried to take some consolation from the idea that his girl friend, Hannah Barbaro, might not break up with him, or might at least postpone the dreaded phone call, if CNBC had it right. The Times devoted several headlines to Lehman. "Lehman's Assurances Ring Hollow," on the front page of the business section, undercut the promises he had made to Hannah on the previous day. "I can change," he had said. "I will change. You'll see. In ten years the Lehman family is going to be completely legitimate.

The adjacent article on the same page announced that "For Lehman Employees. The Collapse Is Personal." He thus stood accused of violating the oldest rule in the book. Everyone knows that it is fatal to mix "personal" and "business." And yet, according to US News and World Report, Lehman was going to take a "long weekend." Well, why not? Wouldn't you?

"Lehman Shares Slide," said Reuters, and it took Lehman a moment to realize that "Shares" in that headline was not a verb but a noun. Or was it both? Was the wire service insinuating that Lehman's famous generosity amounted to sharing his fall from grace, his swift decline down the slippery slope? There was, he had to admit, some truth to the thought. Just yesterday he had taken up an hour of Glen's time on the phone complaining about Hannah and her sisters, whom she had enlisted in the struggle with Lehman.

Reuters also gave readers a timeline on the Lehman family. Henry Lehman, who came to this country from Germany, set up shop in Montgomery (Alabama), in 1844. His brothers Manny and Mayer joined him six years later. The brothers established a private investment firm in 1929, perhaps not in retrospect the best year to have initiated such an enterprise. But "Lehman's Worst Gamble Ever," according to the Motley Fool, may not have occurred then, or even a year ago, when the firm that bore his name had record revenues and earnings per share and yet did nothing to avert a calamity that it should have foreseen.

In Lehman’s mind, the worst gamble is still to come and has to do with his choice of partners to the dance. His record here doesn’t inspire confidence. In a marriage arranged by the matchmakers at American Express, Lehman wed Libby Shearson back in 1984 and let her talk him into changing his name. Only with their divorce in 1994 did Lehman become Lehman again. If autonomy remains the goal, Lehman had better proceed cautiously in the next few days when choosing among seemingly reluctant suitors proposing a merger of convenience.

-- David Lehman (9 / 12 / 08)
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Comments

[Joy Jackson]

Wait -- are you the David Lehman who wrote? Are you related to the Lehman Brothers firm that collapsed?

[Marissa Despain]

I was wondering the same thing, Joy. And are you related to Governor Lehman?

[Terence Winch]

This was inevitable, and very amusing.