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December 4, 2008
The Trouble with Funny Money
The following quote from my high from a new Vanity Fair piece on the end of the money culture:
Most Lehman bankers saw little risk in borrowing against their stock to fund the lifestyle to which they were, on paper, entitled. “Say you have $8 million of Lehman stock,” suggests a senior investment adviser, using hypothetical numbers but a true-life case about a good friend who worked at Lehman. “You want to build a $2 million house. You pledge your stock and you borrow the money and you say to yourself, ‘Let’s say the worst happens: we have a terrible drop in the market. My $8 million will still be worth $4 million, and I’ve only borrowed half of that. So I’m being very conservative.’ But that doesn’t allow for $8 million down to zero.”
[via VF]
Indeed it doesn’t.
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