The Wall Street Skinny Industry S3E7: "Useful Idiot" | The Lehman Episode. Is This the End for Pierpoint?!
We started our careers at the epicenter of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008: the trading floor Lehman Brothers and the CDO Structuring desk at Morgan Stanley. And now, we get to watch our favorite characters reenacting all the drama of the Lehman bankruptcy through the lens of Industry.
We dissect the chaotic "war room" dynamics as executive leadership scrambles for a lifeline, debating the merits of a strategic capital injection from Mitsubishi (mirroring the real-life rescue of Morgan Stanley) versus a total buyout by Barclays (the ultimate fate of Lehman). We explain the critical financial concepts at play, including the mechanics of "good bank/bad bank" splits, dispelling common myths about how government "bailouts" actually worked, and the reality of liquidity crises where "too big to fail" meets "moral hazard."
All of our characters' ambitions and come to a head as they jockey for power and profit with everything on the line. Who will emerge victorious from the boardroom coup? How did a financial error end up in the pitch deck? Who is stabbing whom in the back? And who will ultimately be our useful idiot?
This is an exceptionally technical recap, and we explain topics like counterparty credit risk, employee stock options, insider trading, and converts...as well as a detailed blow by blow of the real events underlying one of Industry's all time best episodes!!!
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