And for our favorite trainwreck, we can think of nothing more fitting than an anniversary cakewreck. Still, it sounds like they’re going to get the biggest present of all – three years later, they may be finally winding down their BK proceedings. Fav quote:

“People at the time were thinking this was going to be a nightmare,” said Prof. Miller, no relation to Harvey Miller. “A three-year bankruptcy is not a nightmare.”

Granted, compared to the Iridium and Delta Air Lines bk, it’s kind of like popping a couple Ambien in succession to get through a particularly lengthy overseas flight. Creditors may start recouping some fraction of their moneys in early 2012. We’d look back on what’s changed three years post-Lehman, but there are still so many hot messes we’re not quite sure where to start, so we’re just gonna leave with this — for the financial collapse that nearly sent our economy back to the stone age, this Flintstones tune is prob fitting:

More news that surprises absolutely no one, from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission’s 533-page opus that was issued on Thursday. Turns out that back in 2008, Lehman Brothers had caught a bad case of the leprosy. There was nothing there anyone wanted, not without the government backing it up like a video hoe:

The other side of the story is that no one would touch Lehman, with the market in free fall, without some assistance from the government.

Perhaps Merrill Lynch’s CEO at the time of the crisis, John Thain, said it best to the panel.

“There was a criticism of bailing out Wall Street. It was a combination of political unwillingness to bail out Wall Street and a belief that there needed to be a reinforcement of moral hazard. There was never a discussion about the legal ability of the Fed to do this.”

He noted that “there was never discussion, to the best of my recollection, that they couldn’t [bail out Lehman]. It was only that they wouldn’t.”

Much attention has been paid to the inconsistency of the failouts, with many firms saved while Lehman was allowed to crash and burn. That Lehman had nothing anyone wanted other than that stock room of company-logo tchochkes might at least partially explain it.

Jamie Dimon is quoted as asking, at the time, “What is the definition of solvency?”

Well, it’s kind of like the definition of obscenity. You know it when you see it, and when someone is leveraged 40 to 1 and says they have $60 bil in real estate holdings, Lehman looked as solvent as a middle-aged sister-wife in Utah looks obscene. So, everyone shunned Lehman Brothers like the other unicorns shunned Charlie, the non-believer. SHUNNNNNN:

At any rate, I think the conclusion of the article is “we should have bailed out either all of them, or none of them,” because, as Charlie the unicorn would say, letting one firm fail while the rest are bailed out is the equivalent of having the financial system wake up in a bathtub full of ice in a hotel in Vegas somewhere, wondering what in the hell happened to its kidneys. Or, something along those lines.

Fortune Magazine, having run out of actual things to report on, decided that it needed to check in on Dick Fuld. This was somehow not complicated by neither Fuld nor his lawyers wishing to comment on the article.

So what has he been up to? Turns out, not a lot, at least not by his standards. A little consulting here, a little getting his pilot’s license there, basically the kind of thing that he would have called “a light weekend” in his old life. Wait, pilot’s license?

He has also been spotted traveling to and from his usual haunts in Sun Valley and Jupiter Island, Fla., on commercial flights for the first time in years. (Curiously, he shows up on the FAA website as having gotten his student pilot’s certificate in November 2008, so he might be working on a strategy to avoid commercial air travel.)

Ha ha, he doesn’t want to risk brushing elbows with mere millionaires. Either that, or he’s planning to fake his own death a la Krusty the Clown, which, maybe not a bad idea.

As for his consulting gig, he’s said to be spending upwards of 60 hours a week (once known as “a working vacation”) at the office of his latest venture, Matrix Advisors, which is more executive advisory than dodging bullets. It’s a four-person office, and no one really knows exactly what he’s actually doing there all day. We’d like to think he leaves his house at 6 in the morning, commutes roughly an hour to the office, where he shuts the door and just cries for twelve hours before going home to outdrink Don Draper. Yes, this would please us.

“Now wait,” you may be saying, “this guy was known as ‘The Gorilla’ as much for his sloping brow line as for his rough temperament and the beautiful silver hair that covers every square inch of his back. He cannot have a human emotion, let alone functioning tear ducts.” Normally, I would be inclined to agree with you, but then this came to light:

Fuld then told White he was leaving Lehman. White asked whether he would be joining Barclays. “F— that,” Fuld said. “I’m not going to Barclays. F— that.” White said he wouldn’t be going to Barclays either, and told Fuld about Spring Hill. Fuld offered to help White any way he could. Then it was time for White to leave. Fuld stood up and came around to the other side of his desk to shake White’s hand. He put his hand out, then pulled it back. “Nah, f— that,” he said. “Give me a hug. I need a hug.” Before White knew it, Fuld, the man whose gruff, brutish manner had given him the nickname “the Gorilla,” was embracing him. Then, White said, Fuld started crying. “Kevin, you’re the first person to say thank-you to me.”

Was a hug all he ever really needed? Could so much of this had been avoided had someone walked into Fuld’s office with a banana as a peace offering, embraced him, and told him they loved him? Probably not, but those questions are a lot more pleasant to ponder than the ensuing love scene that played out in my head after I read that passage. Suffice to say, there’s more than one reason he was called The Gorilla.

But that’s what’s been keeping him out of trouble lately. Well, that and what is sure to be a neverending string of congressional hearings and lawsuits and possibly criminal charges that will consume his life until literally his dying day. Maybe he needs to get with the Krusty Solution sooner rather than later.

OMG both the “Lehman Brothers” and “Bitchfights” tags get to ride again! This time – it’s The Ghost Of Lehman Brothers vs. The House That Jamie Built:

The lawsuit, filed in federal bankruptcy court in New York City, takes special aim at senior JP Morgan officials, including CEO Jamie Dimon, alleging that these officials triggered Lehman’s meltdown by demanding $8.6 billion in collateral from the firm in September of 2008. The lawsuit contends that JP Morgan improperly took advantage of inside knowledge it had of Lehman deteriorating finances because it acted as a “clearing bank” or broker for other firms that were lending Lehman money during its final weeks and months. The suit seeks billions of dollars in damages.

JP Morgan vigorously denies the charges, and now FOX Business Network has obtained the firm’s preliminary plan to fight the charges if and when both sides go to court (the firm will likely seek a dismissal of the case). According to a senior JP Morgan executive, the plan is to put Lehman itself on trial, or to be more exact and former executives who ran the firm amid its deteriorating financial condition in the summer and fall of 2008.

There’s no defense like a good offense, and that’s the route that $JPM is choosing to take. It sounds like their plan is to point out the copious quantity of fail going on at Lehman, including but not limited to its excessive leverage, its proclivity to mark assets to whatever sounded good at the time, and, of course, to throw Dick Fuld under the bus, since doing so is what we’d pretty much call a “quick win” in business parlance.

Or to use the super-succinct phrasing of an anonymous senior official at $JPM:

“We are going to be really f—–g aggressive with this case because this is a total waste of f—–g time!”

Your lips to Jamie’s ears, anonymous senior official.

…and you can’t keep Dick Fuld down, either. He’s resurfaced, at least per BrokerCheck:

Richard S. Fuld Jr. is currently employed by Legend Securities in New York and has been registered with the firm since May 6, according to FINRA’s BrokerCheck Web site. Fuld is not currently listed on Legend Securities’ management team on the firm’s Web site. Legend Securities declined to comment for this story when reached by phone.

Okay, breathe a sigh of relief with me that he’s not doing anything related to management. Though, we’ve recently seen exactly what kind of damage one trade by one dude in Kansas can do to the entire market, so make sure that sigh isn’t too big. We have no idea if he’s actually working out of Legend Securities’ office or from a secret underground bunker somewhere, but I’m posting this just because I get so much search traffic for variants of “dick fuld punched in the face” that I think there might be some people looking for him.