Lehman Brothers

“We Need to Fix the Plumbing”

Allan Grody is a man with a mission.  The fall-out from the financial meltdown has shone a light on many things that need fixing within the financial system, and of these, Grody is focusing on one especially leaky, corroded pipe.  Grody, president of Financial Intergroup, was addressing a GARP (Global Association of Risk Professionals) audience as the third of three panelists on “Modernizing Financial Risk Management:  The Changing Technology Paradigm” on May 22, 2012. Early in his presentation, Grody showed a complex summation diagram. Titled “Need to Fix the Plumbing,” it was a kind of map, one that deserves a place […]

Uncontrolled Risk

Uncontrolled Risk: The Lessons of Lehman Brothers and How Systemic Risk Can Still Bring Down the World Financial System by Mark T. Williams 220 pp., not including 27 pp of Appendix, Notes, and Index (Reprinted from The Analyst, March 2011 issue.) On September 15, 2008, the 158-year-old investment bank, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy, thereby unleashing a horde of systemic risk effects that continue to bedevil the financial system. In this recently-published investigation into how the collapse of one iconic institution contaminated an entire sector, Mark T. Williams draws some sobering lessons. In the 1990s, author Mark T. Williams worked […]