Thursday, September 18, 2008

Black Week

These days, I have been regretting never taking a single business course in school. So, I am not even gonna bother commenting on this article, because I know I would end up making a total fool out of myself. All, I know this week was pretty hefty, economically.

On September 14th, Merrill Lynch was acquired by the Bank of America. Lehman Brothers filed for the largest bankruptcy in the US history, on Monday (September 15th). The following day, they were bought by Barclays. On September 18th, AIG, a major insurance company, was bought by the US government, to prevent a colossal financial breakdown. The same day, Britain's largest banking and insurance group HBOS was acquired by Lloyds TSB.

I guess it's time to dig out the old history textbooks and teach myself about the Great Depression, and the Black Tuesday.

2 comments:

Josh said...

Dark times ahead... it bothers me slightly that a lot of this misery was caused by people being greedy but when something like this happens, the ones who weren't greedy suffer as well. In a nutshell: life's not fair.

Zany said...

Thank for your comment Josh.

Lehman Brothers chief Richard Fuld earned an annual salary of $45 million last year. In other words, they paid him about $17,000 to sink the company. (For that much money, I could have done a better job).

Merrill Lynch's former CEO Stanley O'Neal retired last year with $161 million.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/opinion/18kristof.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

All this stuff really makes you wonder, eh?