The Day That Lehman Died

This past week marked not only a September 11 anniversary, but also the one-year anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ collapse and the beginning of the subsequent fall out on Wall Street and across the US. It seemed like every news organization ran some kind of feature, including one by the New York Times “Where-are-they-now” feature that tried to humanize Lehman employees.

In a different spirit, the BBC created a dark radio play, “The Day That Lehman Died.” You can listen to the whole thing here. The idea of radio plays usually conjures up Orson Welles and aliens for me. In the way that his dramatic reading of a fictional account convinced people that the earth was being invaded by Martians, the BBC play convinces listeners that the financial world is basically a vast conspiracy.

The one-hour play takes place over the September weekend last year that decided Lehman’s fate. It is supposed to take us inside the rooms where the decisions not to bail out Lehman and the decision for Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch occurred. The leaders of major US banks are each played by a deep-voiced actor or another. The show is most successful in its role of mapping out what happened over that weekend to non-finance people like me who got tired of following the news last fall. For example, the show explained that the British government ultimately prevented Barclays from purchasing Lehman.

The show is less effective as drama since it doesn’t identify any good guys or bad guys, so there’s no one to sympathize with. Everyone is portrayed as a greedy, power-hungry, or conniving banker. But this also makes for some great comments that reflect the Wall Street culture: One nameless banker to another on Lehman: “Your CEO is a risk machine.” Bart McDade addressing a roomful of bankers: “Confidence…The entire banking system…the free market…the whole thing works because of confidence…The death of Lehman will destroy that confidence. There will be turmoil.”

Definitely good company on the way to work!