Lehmen Brihers: Can Someone Explain This PLEASE!!

[lucy]

Allow a european to give her 2 cents: First i'd like to thank the American people for spending more money than they earned for a pretty long time. It's on of the major reasons why the economies of most of the rest of the world, especially the european, were growing in the past years. (sarcasm only partly intended)

Okay, so think about this:

There are analysts whose job it is to watch these companies and make investment recommendations -- most of them didn't see this coming, at least as badly as it turned out.

Those analysts and rating companies are paid by whom? Yup, you got it, they are paid by the companies they're supposed to rate. And only the most stupid dogs bite the hand that feeds them.

There are pretty smart investors who put money in these companies -- most of them didn't see this coming.

If they didn't see it coming, they were probably not that smart. Because as said above, it was well known that America and the Americans are spending way more than they earned.
I don't know next to nothing about economy, but even i know that every tab must be picked up eventually, by whoever.

There are journalists for financial reporting whose job it is to do nothing all day but investigate and write about these companies -- most of them didn't see it coming.

There was a series of radio features here in Switzerland about a year ago in which a lot of investors and bankers predicted pretty exactly what would happen, and in the meantime has happened. So i guess at least a couple of journalists did their job.

I think the underlying problem is that as long as the party's in full swing, nobody likes to listen up to the bloke who says that they're will be a big mess to be cleaned up the next day. Now the party is over, and the mess is bigger than anyone ever expected.

And i'm truly sorry for American taxpayers to have to pick up that tab.

[MMI]

Originally Posted by Ragoczy

There are analysts whose job it is to watch these companies and make investment recommendations -- most of them didn't see this coming, at least as badly as it turned out.

Those analysts and rating companies are paid by whom? Yup, you got it, they are paid by the companies they're supposed to rate. And only the most stupid dogs bite the hand that feeds them.

Even crooks and conmen have to have one set of true records so they know what truly is what, and how much they've gained or lost ...