from:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08012008/business/lehman_shopping_mortgage_securities_122558.htm

“In a move similar to what Merrill Lynch has done, Lehman Brothers’ CEO Dick Fuld is trying to shop tens of billions of dollars in mortgage securities on its balance sheet in order to reduce leverage at the embattled investment bank, The Post has learned.”

and

“At the same time, speculation has emerged that Lazard has been hired to advise Lehman. Exactly what the boutique advisory firm has been hired to do could not be learned.”

Re: “It’s the stock holders that are morons”

Yes, and that includes mutual fund managers that hold stocks that have massive dilution. Let’s be real, if your mutual fund is holding the next Enron, you either better wake up, which is way to late at this stage or get ready to be screwed, while your asleep! The fact that EPS has vaporized and the fact that option grants are increasing obviously points to both dilution of common shares and a cut in dividends. That cash burn impact is not going to be any easier during a recession when deflationary pressures will blow apart anything connected to crap like LEH, et al.

Where is the cash flow or value going to come from, when they have to keep selling their shares for less and less to raise cash for compensation and dividends?????

Unless we can pin the disappearance of some pregnant mother or a teen drug addict on LEH, no one is going to give a crap.

I think that we all know that LEH and brethren are going to get away with it. These guys are smart. It’s the stock holders that are morons and they’re going to get just what they deserve.

Best regards,

Econolidious

“When you artificially inflate earnings, improperly book losses so you can sell stock or make earnings targets so you can make high salaries and bonuses, that is stealing,” Fastow said. “I stole in other ways and that way. All that I’m saying is that we stole.”

Daniel Petrocelli, the lead attorney for Skilling, launched his cross-examination of former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow by mocking the witness for saying he was a “hero” who helped Enron meet its earnings targets every quarter. Instead, he told the jury of eight women and four men, Fastow stole millions and allowed his wife to file false tax returns, which ultimately resulted in her spending a year in jail.

“We are talking about greed, greed, greed,” he said. “Greed for money. That’s what drove you. Your greed was so great that you allowed your wife to go to prison.”

For nearly four hours, Petrocelli hammered away at Fastow, asking for details about secret side deals between Enron and two private partnerships he controlled, side deals that netted him and a confederate, Michael Kopper, tens of millions of dollars. At one point, he showed Fastow a computer printout showing that the sum of their illicit gains, unknown to Enron management, exceeded $120 million.

Petrocelli finished his cross-examination with the so-called Raptor arrangement, which was a vehicle used to take pieces of a business that were doing poorly and essentially hide them from investors and the public.

Fastow acknowledged that for awhile he explored marketing the idea to other businesses. Major companies, including Aeon of Chicago and GE Corp., had expressed interest in how the Raptors worked.

From December 1997through December 2000, Kopper received $2 million in “management” and other feesrelating to Chewco. Our review failed to identify how these payments were determined,or what, if anything, Kopper did to justify the payments. More importantly, inMarch 2001 Enron repurchased Chewco’s interest in JEDI on terms Kopper apparentlynegotiated with Fastow (during a time period in which Kopper had undisclosed interestswith Fastow in both LJM1 and LJM2). Kopper had invested $125,000 in Chewco in1997. The repurchase resulted in Kopper’s (and a friend to whom he had transferred partof his interest) receiving more than $10 million from Enron.

Re: To the Members of the Board of DirectorsEnron Corporation
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2002/LAW/02/02/enron.report/powers.report.pdf

Enron is a fine model to use for share buybacks and look for peas under different shells!

Re: (: October 27, 2001) The Enron Corporation, trying to reassure investors that it has ample liquidity, began to repurchase all its outstanding commercial paper yesterday, using $3.3 billion it borrowed from banks by depleting its lines of credit.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980CE7DF1E31F934A15753C1A9679C8B63

An Enron spokesman said that when the commercial paper repurchases are completed the company will retain more than $1 billion in cash.

The moves did not appear to reassure investors, as Enron’s share price fell to another six-year low. Shares traded as low as $15.04 yesterday, before ending the day at $15.40, down 95 cents.

This is all bout capital structure, so any help with this puzzle is appreciated; make Yves proud and use her blog to break the pirates!

Conspiracy of Fools pt. 2?