The Unwinding Of Lehman Brothers With CEO Brian Marsal

This a long, but extraordinary interview with Marsal on CNBC's Squawk Box from Tuesday.  AIG, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, leverage, details on Lehman's balance sheet, the economy.  Pretty much everything is up for discussion:

• "One of my partners said yesterday that we are going to call this phase the "extend and pretend" phase in our economy. Which is you extend someone's maturity - because they are going to default - and you pretend that business will come back or that leverage factor is going to come back."

• "That is the phases we are in right now. Everyone is trying to buy time, as opposed to dealing with the leverage, they are trying to buy time. Whether you are a banker or a company, they are all trying to buy time. I don't see the leverage coming back, and I don't see the consumption of good and services coming back."

Comments

[BrascoSell Short]

Reports today out that AIG stock is worthless, GE stock is worth $2 a share ect... Seems like the bounce we got was totally fake.

great job DB on keeping this site so informative and active. You must be spendng a lot of time on this site.

Sell Short

[RobertM]

I'll say it again. You are a posting machine! I don't know how you find the time. Keep up the great work.

[James H]

"Everyone is trying to buy time, as opposed to dealing with the leverage, they are trying to buy time. Whether you are a banker or a company [or a FED CHAIRMAN or a TREASURY SECRETARY], they are all trying to buy time."

This was the upshot of that Krugman/Stiglitz/Obama dinner from a while back -- if all goes well (LOL!), the banks can limp along, fake it, and slowly steal hundreds of billions of dollars by screwing depositors with very low interest payments and by "earning" interest on Treasuries, all the while getting free money from Bubbles the Money Monkey. To banks and other comapnies, we should also add the US Govt. How long can THEY fake it before the toxic debt poop hits the proverbial fan?

It's all so hard to take sometimes -- TARP, TALF, P-PIP... P-PIP is dead... Long live the P-PIP!... bailouts, bankruptcies, Government Motors... global warming, global cooling, Cap and Trade... Bernanke and Paulson... that worthless piece of maggot shit, Tim Geithner... inflation or deflation?...

I'm even starting to WRITE like Howard Beale. It's insane. I hate these bastards. And now they're trying to block the audit of the Fed. And 95% of the population has nofreakingidea.