As far as good and bad people, well... The senior $LARGE_CONSUMER_BANK Vice-President who told me how much he loved the profit he was making off the overdraft fees he thought were “an honest service” to his poorest customers, with a huge smile on his face, was definitely a lot more evil than Dick.
But look, if you’ve had direct experiences with a bunch of the CEOs and senior execs at these firms, feel free to provide a counter! If you’re basing things on journalist accounts, however, you’re going to be in for a surprise when you learn who pays their bills and takes them on trips...
The market is incredibly complex. If you thought that executives can foresee the downstream effects of a given market event because they are "all-knowing, all-wise", then of course you are an idiot.
But nobody you were arguing with even remotely thinks this. Of course, there is uncertainty. There was never going to be a "very orderly" draw-down, but the issues from the moral hazard of propping up Lehman were (and remain) a big consideration when considering bailouts.
The SEC thinks this, the linked statement suggests believe they can foresee rapid and severe losses that normal traders can't. Someone in this argument likely agrees with the SEC.
Says Dick Fuld. I doubt that's true, though, because at the time Lehman was going under, they didn't know that all the other banks were going with them. Remember, the bailouts didn't come until a few weeks later when the money market funds broke the buck triggering $trillions of withdrawals in what would essentially be a financial system wide run on the bank. The regulators didn't like the idea that a failing bank should be bailed out (as they shouldn't), and they couldn't find a merger partner like they did with Bear Stearns, so they let it fail. The bailouts didn't come until they realized that the fallout from Lehman's failure would bring down the whole system. Yeah, Dick Fuld wasn't really any different than any of the CEO's that got a bailout, but to cast him as the good guy among the group is ridiculous.