Seriously out of her depth

Seriously out of her depth ‘Some of Gregory’s (Number two at Lehman- friend and protector of President Fuld) hiring decisions , meanwhile struck people as highly unorthodox. In 2005 he took the head of the firm’s fixed income- Bart McDade who was and expert in the world of debt and made him Head of Equities, a business he knew little about….’People need broad experience, it is the power of the machine it is not the individual’ Gregory explained. Of all the individuals who Gregory anointed none was more controversial that Erin Callan, a striking blond who favored ‘Sex and the City’ style stilettos (And Ed we can leave it there Ok!) When he chose the forty one year old Callan as the firm’s new Chief Financial Officer-CFO in Sept 2007 Lehman insiders were stunned. Callan was obviously bright, but she knew precious little about the firm’s treasury operations and had no background in accounting whatsoever. Another woman at the firm, Ros Stephenson, perhaps the only banker besides Fuld who could get Roberts kingpin Henry Kravis on the phone was furious about the appointment and took her complaint directly to Dick Fuld, who as always backed Gregory. Callan yearned to prove to her colleagues that she was a seasoned street fighter just like Fuld. (Yes I saw the I think it was a girl, on West Side Story- she was good too!-Ed) If anything her path to the top of the financial industry had been even more improbable than his story. One of three daughters of a New York Police officer, she graduated from New York University Law School in 1990 and took a job for the Wall Street firm Simpson Thatcher as an associate in their tax department. Lehman Brothers was a major client. After five years at Simpson she took a chance one day and phoned Lehman, she caught a break early when a change in the tax law sparked a boom in securities that were taxed as if they were debt. Callan as a tax expert was adapt at structuring these complex investments for clients… She quickly catapulted up the ranks overseeing the firm’s global finance solutions and global finance analytic groups within a few years. Hedge funds were becoming the top Walls Street clients and in 2006 Callan was entrusted with the critical job of overseeing the firm’s investment banking relationship with them… Soon she caught the eye of Joe Gregory, an executive who believed strongly in the value of diversity. He recognized that the world was changing and that Lehman as well as the rest of the financial community could no longer be the sanctuary of white men only- (Our Editor agrees!) and a woman would be good for Lehman…. With that it became clear to Freidheim that the leak had been her idea. Like a growing group of executives up and down the organization Friedheim had come to the conclusion that Callan was in the wrong job and he had become tired of her perky self assurance. She performed for the media as though she were on some kind of reality show….And he had been furious back in April when Craig in the Wall Street Journal article had crowned her ‘Lehman’s straight shooter’ as if the rest of them were a pack of untrustworthy liars . Callan just didn’t know where to draw the line. She kept a model of a private jet on her desk (Our Pastor doesn’t have one yet but commuting up and down the country seriously needs one-Ed) and revealed details of her personal shopper to the press blithely unaware of the resentment it inspired (Yes and last I looked Jesus was on his donkey) The worst was when she framed a photograph of herself in the Portfolio magazine that pronounced her, ‘The most Powerful Woman on Wall Street’ and hung it on her office wall. Gregory had to tell her to take it down. P29-30, 111-112 Too big to Fail A R Sokin Penguin New York 2009. A Jewish friend of mine- OK I’ll be honest here- not dropping any names mind you- the only Jewish friend I am liable to have! He said ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’ And I was talking to my son about this as we discussed the predicted drop in world population from the current 7 billion to under 2 billion far less than it was when I was a boy - And he was telling me that he expected in those times to being given land. And as I was painting in the rafters I repented of those British Aristocracy in the time of King Henry who had been given Church Lands after Henry disestablished the Catholic Church and became head of the Church of England. Yes there are people who actually know exactly what needs to be done to sort out problems on the land and it is a wise move for them to as my Jewish friend was predicting- To inherit the earth… But Yes on what we have been reading here- Meek. One of those magic words which when as a translator I begin to put it back into the text… Well the entire message of the book changes. And the proud? Well to quote Dr Martin Luther King. ‘Someone said some time Pride comes before a fall –USA!’ No! Liar! He didn’t say that but Brother Jeremiah Wright prophet pastor of President Obama he said things along those lines- so what are we personally gonna do about that this coming year 2015? Pride or meekness? Which?