Making CEOs Responsible for Company Financials Didn’t Stop Lehman From Cooking the Books

One of the major components of the post-Enron accounting reforms, and laughable so, was a provision requiring that all CEOs sign off on their company’s financial statements. It was supposed to prevent CEOs from willfully looking the other way while subordinates cooked the company books (i.e., deny them plausible deniability) More…

Lehman CEO: Why Weren’t We Bailed Out?

The House oversight committee has spent the day unloading on Lehman Bros. CEO Richard Fuld — his $480 million in compensation over the past eight years, his investment bank’s unprecedented leveraging of mortgage assets, his misleading of Lehman shareholders up to the day the company declared bankruptcy and the More…

GOP Line on Financial Crisis: Blame the GSE’s

The House oversight committee is holding a hearing now on the collapse of Lehman Bros. and the financial crisis generally. This hearing– and four others– will likely provide hints of how Congress, post-bailout bill, will try to revamp how the government polices Wall Street.

The committee has produced internal More…