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There are only two macroeconomic understandings operating in the world, and these are the so called “neoliberal” Washington Consensus macroeconomics which is in force throughout the American-dominated world and the Tokyo Consensus Shimomuran-Wernerian macroeconomic system which operates within the Tokyo Consensus Zone.Both Thatcher and Reagan started their regimes by attacking the unions. Thatcher attacked the miners and the wages and salaries in nationalised industries and won, then privatised the previously nationalised industries, which improved their productivity by sacking large numbers of workers. No provision was made for improving the absent funding for SMEs which are now and were then the inventive and innovative backbone of the economy.This is not a theory. I was there on budget day on March 1982 in a BBC Parliament studio, about to be interviewed by Will Hutton, who I then knew well, because I expected the Thatcher Government to adopt the better SME funding proposals that had been discussed with ministers and in two seminars I gave to the Parliamentary Industry Committee and with Thatcher herself in 10 Downing Street. I was the economics author who had co-authored, with the late great Lord Lever, several articles on “How Germany Beats Britain” during November 1979 in the central pages of the then-great Sunday Times. Michael Grylls, then the Chairman of the Parliamentary industry group, had set up the Grylls “gang” to try to get the Thatcher Government to consider providing better long-term funding for SMEs. That Group was very ably led by John King (later Lord King of Wartnaby) chaired by Michael Grylls (later Sir Micael Grylls) directed by Bill Poeton (President of the Union of Independent Companies and later a CBE) assisted by Barry Baldwin a senior partner on Price Waterhouse, and me, the major author of the two Grylls Group reports, and in 2006 I received an MBE for services to further education. That group met many politicians and their teams, for example we met Nigel Lawson and Geoffrey Howe in 11 Downing Street when each were the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Margaret Thatcher accompanied by Lawson in 10 Downing Street. I also met Alan Walters, Thatcher’s personal economic advisor, in his little room on the first floor of 10 Downing Street, where we had an interesting discussionAny improvement in the bank funding of SMEs was powerfully lobbied against by the London Clearing Banks. These banks bought the services of a significant number of MPs who jumped to their feet during the seminars of the Parliamentary Industry Committee, declared an interest because they were “consultants” to one clearing bank or another, and then read a prepared response drafted by the CLCB, which I often thought these MPs did not understand. See my blog on the 6th May 2014 on the Rethinking Economics websiteShimomuran Economics and the Rise of Japan and ChinaThe proposals to improve UK SME funding were turned down by Geoffrey Howe on budget day with the words“We are all indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey, North-West (Mr Grylls) and others for the way in which they have focused public attention on this problem. In many cases, the selectivity in the remedies proposed would favour lending by the banks, and lending to “tax-exhausted” companies. We have considered these ideas very carefully. But they raise difficult questions of principle, and we are not persuaded that they offer the best solutions to the problems they are designed to solve.”He never found another or a better solution. Howe said it was a “budget for industry” but it wasn’t. It was, like so many British budgets, a budget for the management of continuing economic decline, focused on a financial policy in the absence of any industrial policy. I wrote a book about the decline of the UK and the rise of the China Sea economies where the front cover looks like thisThe subtitle of that book is “The Story of the Economic Bomb”, You can see the blurb for the book atLucky Bastards of The 20th Century: The Story of The Economic BombShortly after the election of President Reagan in the USA, he attacked the pilots’ union. Although the right to form a union to assist collective bargaining had been enacted into American law in the 1930s, Reagan quietly let business leaders know that no legal action would be taken against any company which did not negotiate with their unions and which set lower wages unilaterally, That was illegal, but central government is meant to act within the law, and when it does not, the law falls into disuse.Worse still, the Reagan Government enabled the CIA to raise money to fund US anti-drug operations in Columbia by becoming a major drug importer into California. That may have been useful in not requiring the consent of Congress to agree more money for anti-drug operations, but the deleterious effect of these drugs on the lives of the largely black communities in the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco was enormous.The major effect of the Thatcher and Reagan eras was to alter the power structure within their economies in favour of the rich and against their wage and salary earners. An increasing share of the gains of economic growth went to the top 10% and 1% of earners and much less to the lower 90% of wages and salaries. The governments of the US and UK economies had created a situation for the long-term attack on the living standards of their workers and their families, which has continued up to the present day.After the Thatcher and Reagan eras, the West was no longer about economic development and the fostering of widespread prosperity. It was about a continuing government-inspired class war against their people.The historian Arnold Toynbee has concluded that all civilisations break down in either external wars or internal class wars. The UK and USA had promoted internal dissent after 1980. But the rest of the American-dominated world had to receive these dangerous gifts also.The neoclassical castle in the air - an entirely theoretical economics based upon six assumptions unlikely ever to apply in practice - was adopted as the official quasi-religious economic creed by the West and this had the required result of completely detaching Western economic thought from reality. Nonetheless that “Washington Consensus”, which some very foolish Western economists claimed was “as valid as the laws of Physics” was forced down the throats of developing countries in order to continue colonialisation on a financial basis.The USA and Britain once had a complete network of local banks (“Country Banks” in Britain, county, local and public State banks in the USA) which had been the foundation of their industrial development and continuing prosperity.These small banks had been crucial in establishing the industrial revolution first in Scotland then in England and by about 1800 almost every town and village in the UK and the USA had a local bank which supported local SMEs. These banks were the source of the vast growth of the USA from 1938–44 in President Roosevelt’s economic miracle which administration understood and practised investment credit creation economics, which is Shimomuran-Wernerian macroeconomics today.The English Country Banks amalgamated into about 20 regional banks in England by 1880 while still continuing their local funding of SMEs. Then the London banks set up branches in the HQ towns of the major provincial banks and gained some of the country bank’s customers, often bankrupting country banks so as to take them over. The London Clearing Banks had no interest whatsoever in continuing to fund local SMEs in any form. The same thing happened in the USA.Now in the UK the bank branches of the London Clearing Banks drain the money out of the UK provinces without providing the local taps for SME investment.Meanwhile in the Tokyo Consensus group of economies Japan zoomed from war devastation to become a major industrial power within less than a decade. Japan’s no cost investment credit economics was copied with increasing success by Taiwan, by South Korea and by China.The economics world is now divided into two camps.First, there are the Tokyo Consensus economies of “abundant capital” where the central bank, under the control of the government, creates no-cost investment credit and canalises that money to its industries, sucking neatly all the unemployed into the capital goods sector and thus achieving widespread prosperity and high growth, and becoming among the richest economies on earth in due course. Their economics is realistic MMT-Shimomuran-Wernerian macroeconomics and very soundly based.Second, there is the Washington Consensus economies of “low capital investment” where economists do not have the faintest idea about how to increase the rate of economic growth or run the economy for the benefit of all the people. Washington Consensus economics is an intellectual defense of “Market forces” but the anti-union anti-working-people market was a deliberate creation of government. The people’s money is concentrated into a cartel of a few banks which charge high prices for their services.If money costs nothing to create, why are the interest costs so high? Successive governments have allowed the banks to gamble their funds (sometimes making vast losses) and then overcharging their customers to recover their asset bases. This is called “financialisation.”In Britain, the downward trend in the social contract and living standards has been given a further twist. The Conservative governments including Thatcher have noticed they might never be elected again unless they could fix the electoral rolls in their favour. So Thatcher used the Poll Tax to chase non-Conservative voters off the Parliamentary rolls and that won an underserved election for Major which all the polls said he was going to lose. Then Cameron used the Individual Elector and Registration Act 2013 to chase many more millions of mainly non-Conservative voters off the Parliamentary rolls and won the 2015 election which all the polls said he was going to lose. Theresa May has just locked in future Conservative victories through gerrymandering the constituency boundaries in 2016. There is a vast amount of evidence for all these statements.The polls were not wrong. The denial of votes to largely non-Conservative voters using the Poll Tax and the 2013 IER Act so as to fix the elections in favour of unpopular right-wing governments was very wrong. If you think any of this is wrong, look inside or better still buyHow David Cameron Fixed the 2015 Election and Much Else: How They Plan To Fix The Next Election, and How We Could Restore a Prosperous Representative Democracy In Britain: Amazon.co.uk: Mr George Tait Edwards: 9781517060794: BooksThat book also contains the text of my complete Gresham College lecture about “The Curious Case of The Economist the West Forgot - The Life and Times of Dr Osamu Shimomura ” whose real-world macroecomics provides a partial explanation about the realistic macroeconomics of the Tokyo Consensus Zone. See my Gresham College Lecture aboutand also see Professor Richard Werner’s lecture on the same platformThe global balance of richness and power is now transferring at at increasing rate from the West to the East, from London and Washington to Beijing and to the Tokyo Zone cluster of economies.It was not the Chinese that brought about the decline of the the USA and not the Japanese who brought about the decline of industry in the UK but the deliberate activity of Reagan and Thatcher and their ineffective descendants like both Presidents Bush and PMs Blair and Brown and Cameron and May. You can of course argue that they didn’t know any better, but they had no right to remain so misinformed.Theoretical macroeconomics leads to economic decline. Realistic macroeconomics causes rapid economic development. How could it be otherwise?

Well since you asked, let me list the various points of credit for which Mr. Trump is so most deserving.Trump is claiming an economy that Obama delivered, (chart follows) and has been able to ride on Obama’s economic success until his own “economic policies’ bit with disastrous effect. Now the USA is facing the real possibility of a recession in spite of the fact that he was handed a large and growing economy.U.S. posts a record trade deficit in goods despite ‘America First’ policies The 2018 figure shows that President Trump’s tariffs and tough policies have failed to shrink a trade gap that he argues represents a massive transfer of wealth from Americans to foreigners. Source Washington PostTrump promised he would get rid of the national debt in 8 years but now it’s at an all-time high with Trump actually adding $8.3 trillion in additional debt. Source: Trump and the National Debt Trump Pledged to Eliminate the Debt. Instead He Will Add $8.3 TrillionThe VA is in shambles and he fired the only man that vets trusted. Trump and the Republicans pulled support for the Vets while the Dems supported a number of bills to help them. And it was Trump who fired the only Vet Director that the vets had any faith in and put in place a lackey that has done nothing but undermine the advances the prior director had made. “According to Military Times: “Vets still face long waits with the fraudulent VA Choice program. Dems up to saving taxpayers from another GOP fraud.According to Stars and Stripes, veterans using VA Choice program could get stuck with a $30,000 medical bill. GOP up to no good. If Dems don't stop con fraud, who will?”Trump’s Budget Proposal Cut Support for Disabled Veterans?The president's plan did call for changes that would have had a significant financial effect on some disabled veterans. Source Military timesHow often do Republicans undermine veterans?When you hear Republicans praising veterans, do not believe it for a minute. Congressional Republicans blocked or filibustered bill after bill that would have aided veterans, all in an attempt to undermine President Barack Obama while cutting taxes for the wealthy are still at with Trump as leader.Mitch McConnell and his cohorts filibustered a stopped a total of $21 billion in funds that would have expanded veteran benefits and saved expansions.Trump and the GOP claim they love the military, maybe so, but the sure as hell have no use for them when they have done their duty for their country and come home!Here’s a partial list of what the Republicans “did” for the Vets:• blocked a $1 billion jobs bill that would have helped millions of vets• blocked a bill that would have kept benefits on par with the cost of living• killed the Wounded Veteran Job Security Act• killed the Veterans Retraining Act• killed the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program Act• killed the Disabled Veterans Home Improvement Act• killed the Job Creation Through Entrepreneurship ActHere Is just another few examples of what Trump is planning for the Vets:1.Source: The Stars and Stripeshttps://www.stripes.com/news/group-urges-white-house-va-to-reject-resurfaced-proposal-cutting-disabled-unemployed-veterans-benefits-1.561091“WASHINGTON — A cost-saving proposal has resurfaced in a new Congressional Budget Office report as an option to help reduce the federal budget deficit.The report suggests removing approximately 235,000 disabled veterans from a Department of Veterans Affairs program called Individual Unemployability in 2020, projecting it could save $47.6 billion in the next 10 years. Veterans removed from the program would see their monthly incomes decrease by an average of $1,300, according to CBO estimates.“We want the White House to immediately make a statement saying Trump’s recommendation is out of line and will not be considered,” said Joe Chenelly, director of Veteran Affairs.The program applies to veterans who have disability ratings through the VA of between 60 percent and 100 percent and are unable to secure jobs because of their disabilities. It allows them to receive the highest compensation rate.The CBO suggested removing veterans from Individual Unemployability once they reach age 67, claiming those veterans would be eligible for Social Security by that time.The cut was one of 121 cost-saving proposals included in the CBO report, titled “Options for Reducing the Deficit: 2019 to 2028.” The CBO periodically compiles the list of policy options to help inform lawmakers.2.Trump 2020 budget: Which department budgets would be cut ...https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/politics/trump-budget-2020/Mar 11, 2019 - The Trump administration released its 2020 budget request on Monday, Veterans Affairs ...Also Cuts $845 billion over the next 10 years from Medicare, the federal program that provides health insurance to older Americans.3. White House has no answer for 7 million veterans who stand to lose health care"In their desperation to gain votes for their unpopular plan to repeal Obamacare, House Republicans inserted a raft of “improvements” to the bill, including one that could harm up to 7 million veterans by making them ineligible for the bill’s tax credits.The most recent estimates suggest about 9.1 million individuals are enrolled in VA health programs. However, a 2014 Congressional Budget Office score of veterans’ choice legislation concluded that “about 8 million [veterans] qualify to enroll in VA’s health system but have not enrolled.” Subtracting for VA enrollment gains since that CBO score leaves approximately seven million veterans eligible for, but not enrolled in, VA health programs, and thus potentially affected by the House’s “technical” change.”Source: https://defendingthetruth.com/threads/7-million-vets-could-lose-health-care.60726/4.Veterans are losing 6 different ways right now’The implosion of Ronny Jackson’s nomination to lead the Veterans Affairs Department may look like the Trump administration’s drama of the moment, but it carries big consequences for 9 million veterans in a sprawling health care system with uneven results and a precarious future.Not only does the VA have no leader, but the veteran health care community is also divided between conservatives inclined to privatize much of veterans’ care and those who want to invest more in fixing the current system. The impact can be seen across 170 medical centers and hundreds of clinics of varying quality that treat veterans who served in the U.S. military in every conflict since World War II.5. Did Congress Just Screw 7 Million Vets Out Of Their Tax Credits?Source: https://taskandpurpose.com/congress-veterans-ahca-trumpcareTrump has appointed cabinet heads all intent on reversing the very oversight, rules, and regulations in favor of big business, but which were originally put in place by both sides of the aisle to protect consumers and the environment. Toxic chemicals threaten water supply Source Washington PostE.P.A. Plans to Get Thousands of Pollution Deaths Off the Books by Changing Its Math“The Environmental Protection Agency plans to change the way it calculates the health risks of air pollution, a shift that would make it easier to roll back a key climate change rule because it would result in far fewer predicted deaths from pollution, according to five people with knowledge of the agency’s plans.”The E.P.A. had originally forecast that eliminating the Obama-era rule, the Clean Power Plan, and replacing it with a new measure would have resulted in an additional 1,400 premature deaths per year.Source: E.P.A. Plans to Get Thousands of Pollution Deaths Off the Books by Changing Its MathThe EPA is also cutting off funding for several research centers that study the effects of pollution on childhood development. Greenwire’s Corbin Hiar and Ariel Wittenberg report: “The move, critics say, is part of a broader effort by [Trump] to downplay science that could lead to stricter regulations on polluting industries. At issue are 13 Children’s Environmental Health and Disease “Prevention Research Centers located at institutions across the country.” Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/category/the-daily-202/?utm_term=.1d89f15bad9b&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1Trump has 17 investigations and criminal charges against his companies, family and his presidency, all of which undermines the presidency as well as America’s standing on the world stage. The direct result, it is taking time and serious attention away from the very issues that need fixing.The $1.5 trillion in tax breaks that he promised the middle class, didn’t go to the working poor or the middle class, but instead directly benefited him, his family, the richest 1% and the most profitable corporations on the planet. The same CEO’s and top executives gave themselves major bonuses and then bought back their own stock that gave the markets a temporary surge, only to collapse as investors lost confidence in Trump and his looney policies and tariffs. “The tax cut has utterly failed to deliver the promised investment boom. Companies didn’t use their giant windfall to build new plants and raise productivity, they used it to buy back a lot of stock, passing the gains on to wealthy investors.” Source: New York TimesAT&T pocketed Trump’s tax cuts after promising 7,000 new jobs — but slashed 23,000 jobs instead while pocketing the tax cuts. Source: AT&T promised 7,000 new jobs to get tax break—it cut 23,000 jobs insteadThese unfair and misdirected tax cuts resulted in a double whammy adding to already serious fiscal deficiencies by reducing taxes overall while increasing the burgeoning deficit problem. Not only has America been ‘robbed’ of those taxes now and going forward, but these are taxes that should in all fairness be paid by the very rich, and highly profitable corporations. “Trump’s twin deficits show that his party has been lying about its policy priorities and that he is completely clueless about his signature policy issue”. Source: New York Times. This unwarranted tax cut for the rich has increased the deficit by an additional $1 trillion dollars, now estimated to actually come in at close to $2 trillion. And guess who is going to pay for it… one guess.Both Rubio and McConnell have both stated very clearly on a number of occasions that the deficit will have to be reduced with cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and wait for it…. your own hard-earned Social Security benefits. You know, the fund you have been paying into all your working life, the one, that you counted on to supplement and assuage your retirement when the time comes! Well, thanks to Trump and the Republicans, that is now up for grabs and is imperiled. And this is just in: Trump’s recent budget proposal included billions of dollars in Social Security cuts. The proposed cuts were a huge betrayal of his campaign promise to protect our Social Security system. Source: Trump is employing this insidious strategy to attack Social Security — and avoid a massive 2020 backlashCuts in Medicare and your Social Security is just part of the Trump agenda, as are his tariffs which are adding additional tax on those imported consumer items you are buying, and speaking of his infamous tariffs, based on his, “I know what is best” claim when he decided to instigate his tariff plan against the advice of both Democratic and Republican economists and CEOs, the results have been disastrous. “As many people have pointed out to no avail, Trump is all wrong about what trade deficits do. “ Source: New York Times“Tariff Man Has Become Deficit Man - Donald Trump focused his ire mainly on trade deficits, insisting that “our jobs and wealth are being given to other countries that have taken advantage of us.” But over two years of unified G.O.P. control of government, a funny thing happened: Both deficits surged. The budget deficit has hit a level unprecedented except during wars and in the immediate aftermath of major economic crises; the trade deficit in goods has set a record. Trump really has no idea how international trade works.” Source: New York TimesTrump’s tariffs have meant nothing more than an added extra tax on Americans and have cost taxpayers an additional $12 billion that Trump had to dole out to soybean farmers alone for lost crops, and he is now promising the same farmers $15 billion as they face even greater losses than estimated. To cover for his stupidity and wrong-headed Tariffs, “Tariff man” Trump, as he likes to call himself, lies to the American public by telling them that the tariffs are making America richer as they are filling the American treasury, when in fact they are an added tax on consumers, now estimated to cost an American family between $500 and $800. “Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports hurt American businesses; “Over the past year, the US has placed about $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods, in part to make Chinese products more expensive so Americans don’t buy them. The administration has also placed steep tariffs on all imported steel, angering other major US trade partners. Source: Farmers are losing patience with Trump’s trade warAs for those coal mining jobs he promised, nothing, zilch, an nothing either in terms of companies being brought back. Try and name even one that hadn’t been in the planning stages prior to Trump being elected. Of course, there have been jobs still fleeing as evident by Harley Davison closed a factory and moved the jobs to Europe to avoid Trump’s job-killing Tariff program of terror. Western Farmers are not only seeing their crops rot in the fields for lack of markets due to Trump’s tariff war, but they are now losing hope and farms as bankruptcies are on the rise. Farm bankruptcies are on the rise. “A total of 84 farms in the upper Midwest filed for bankruptcy between July 2017 and June 2018, according to the Federal Reserve of Minneapolis. That’s more than double the number of Chapter 12 filings during the same period in 2013 and 2014 in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana.” Source: Farmers are losing patience with Trump’s trade war “ farmers are freaking out. Some are facing financial ruin now that millions of Chinese consumers, who once bought about 60 percent of American agriculture exports, have stopped buying their products. Exports to China from Minnesota dropped about 25 percent after the first round of tariffs went into effect last year” Trump created a $12 billion bailout program for farmers, and on May 17th, he outlined another plan to give them an additional $15 billion. Farmers are far from happy with this approach “it’s not clear if those bailouts will be enough to keep farmers happy. “We don’t want another check from the government,” Isane said. “People don’t realize that once you lose a market, it’s hard to get it back.” Source: Farmers are losing patience with Trump’s trade war“Net farm income has fallen by 50% since 2013 and the trade war has pushed commodity prices down even further. Many farmers and ranchers are on the verge of financial collapse.”…the resolving the trade war with China should be the administration’s “top priority” the Agriculture Department was told…farmers were disappointed to see tensions between the two countries escalate in recent days….the Agriculture Department was told that the president’s proposed bailout package for American farmers would not do nearly enough to stop the bleeding — it “will not make up for lost export markets and long term implications of trade disputes.” “Farmers are hurting,” he said. “It is critical the upcoming trade assistance be structured in a manner that does maximum good for our farmers and ranchers.” Source: Kansas GOP senator writes desperate letter to end Trump’s trade war: Farmers ‘on the verge of financial collapse’GM had to fire 14,000 workers in large part due to tariffs on aluminum and steel, making their cars much more expensive and Ford’s CEO has reported that the tariffs have cost the company an additional $1 billion as of the end of Nov. These costs have to be passed onto customers or absorbed by the company by cutting staff and workers, and it just keeps getting worse day in and day out.. yet this fool has no clue… “Trump’s Trade Grade- We get a look at his transcript on trade policy. It’s not pretty. President Trump’s economic policy: He picks a yardstick to measure the American economy — the trade deficit — that’s mostly meaningless. He spends years criticizing it as too high and promising to reduce it. And under his administration, it surges.” “By just about any measure you pick,” Slate’s Jordan Weissmann writes, “his effort appears to have been an absolute flop.”“He set out to fix a non-problem (a trade deficit) and created real ones including international conflict, higher consumer prices and gross inefficiency in our economy,” The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin writes.The vice president of the National Farmers Union, appeared May 16th, 2019 on Fox News to discuss President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war with China.“It has been insane,” Edelburg said. “We’ve had a lot of farmers — a lot more bankruptcies going on, a lot more farmer suicides.”“We have more commodities, more grain sitting on the ground now because we lost huge export markets. We’ve lost export markets that we’ve had for 30 years that we’ll never get a chance to get back again. Farmers are hopeful to get their crops in the ground this year but really hope we have a place to sell it come fall.” Source: FOX NEWS May 16th, 2019Edelburg said the Trump administration’s plan to provide up to $20 billion in federal aid to farmers would help, but wouldn’t be a solution to the problem.“We don’t need band-aids. We need long-term fixes to make sure farmers are able to survive. …the way (Trump ) is going about it may not be the right fix.”He was just found guilty of using his charity fund as a private piggy bank and was fined $25 million for defrauding idiots for being suckered into this get rich quick “Trump University” scheme...this and these continuing malfeasances have taken their toll in misdirecting attention, time and required action away from the serious issues that face all Americans.All of this In less than two years, and yet he has also managed to:. Divide the country like no politician ever before, by doing so the worst way possible, along racist and economic lines.. He has marginalized the rights of women, minorities and those of non-traditional sexual preferences.. He has normalized hatred, racism, and misogyny. “We’re a nation coming apart at the seams, a nation in which each tribe has its own narrative and the narratives are generally resentment narratives. The African-American experience is somehow at the core of this fragmentation — the original sin that hardens the heart, separates Americans from one another and serves as model and fuel for other injustices.” Source: New York Times. He has made America and the planet dirtier for years to come through egregious environmental deregulation. Here’s what Obama’s EPA reported: “fracking contaminates water. For instance, they state that "Injection of hydraulic fracturing fluids directly into groundwater resources" causes contamination. ... The EPA also notes that disposing of fracking wastewater directly into surface water contaminates drinking water.” This under Obama’s administration. But under Trump’s crooked EPA appointment of Pruit, who has been forced out of office for personal spending of Government monies,Trump and his EPA lied to the America public and had this to say "Data gaps and uncertainties limited EPA’s ability to fully assess the potential impacts on drinking water resources locally and nationally. Because of these data gaps and uncertainties, it was not possible to fully characterize the severity of impacts, nor was it possible to calculate or estimate the national frequency of impacts on drinking water resources from activities in the hydraulic fracturing water cycle.". He has profited illegally from his position, as have his children and son-in-law.. He’s lowered the level of discourse throughout America where simple bumper sticker bromides pass for intelligent thought.. He has destroyed the country’s relationships with our best and most loyal allies and cuddled up to the world’s most disgraceful authoritarians.. He made truth and facts irrelevant for his base while making intellectuals and the media the enemy of the people. And has told close to 10,000 verifiable lies Back on Jan 21 he was up to 8,158 false or misleading claims. but now it is more than 10,000 Source Washington Post:https://www.washingtonpost.com. He has crushed regulations meant to level the market so that small businesses had at least a small chance of competing against large corporations.. He has overturned financial regulations, making it now virtually impossible for consumers to protect themselves against the practices of shady banks… allowing for another probable meltdown. John Taylor, president of the nonprofit National Community Reinvestment Coalition had warned of the last crash and says "We got into that mess because of the lack of regulation, and now we're talking about making banks less accountable. It makes no sense whatsoever." Source:10 years after the financial crisis, have we learned anything?. He’s made the USA a global embarrassment.. For many businesses and farmers international trade is infinitely more difficult than it was just a few years ago.. He has driven the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis since he refuses to accept or simply breaks the laws of the land at will.. He’s ripped up numerous trade deals and replaced them with either nothing or moved the deck chairs slightly around the deck so that he could proclaim victory when in fact all he really did was to justify another so-called win. A good case in point was the needless drama, cost, and loss of goodwill caused in settling the NAFTA dispute with both Mexico and Canada. With a simple inclusion that didn’t materially alter the plan from the original, Trump then changed the name and claimed victory.. While the Supreme Court has long been known as non-partisan, Trump and the GOP pushed through two hard leaning rightwing justices, and is already been pushing cases through the lower courts in order to overturn numerous civil rights that are favored by 70% of the country and which had been considered untouchable, (established laws can be reviewed and altered as a precedent as Kavanaugh referred to existing laws while lying to ensure his appointment as a Trump surrogate and protector ). Trump is constantly spreading fear and paranoia regarding everything from border protection, threats of nuclear war, murderous gangs, allies raping America economically, and white people being victimized and marginalized by a country made vulnerable by left-leaning Democrats, none of which is true. Trump employs hateful rhetoric for no other reason than to keep his rabble at a constant boil, all to the detriment of civil discourse, fairness, and honesty.. And of course, there is Trump’s magically wall that the Mexicans are going to pay for while claiming that the Democrats are against border security.. when in fact all sane people, no matter the party, don’t support Trump and his magic beans that will somehow grow the wall that the Mexicans have clearly stated for which they certainly will not pay.. Trump colluded with Russia to influence his election and has spent over two years obstructing justice in broad daylight as a cover-up. Now there is evidence that the NRA received monies from Russia to pass along to Trump’s campaign and there is some discussion that even Saudi Arabia may have helped out trump get elected with more foreign contributions, a crime of its own. In order to cover up his deals with Russia, Trump fired Comey, then the head of the FBI, discredited the Justice Department, and then, the heads of the FBI while calling main news media fake and putting forth the claim that the “Deep State,” in fact his own government, were all out to get him.. Trump has attacked the free press time and time again because they have the tenacity to point out the hypocrisy and wrong-headedness of his policies and knee-jerk decisions that are detrimental to America and in direct violation of America’s number 1 constitutional right, freedom of speech.· Trump has undermined and demonized international alliances that have loyally stood with and have gone to war in support of America for decades· He endangered the entire world economy with his tariffs and isolationism· He prompted many countries to seriously look to find alternatives to US’s vaunted support and stability while allowing both Russia and China an upper hand in gaining influence and control of countries that had previously favored the USA.. Trump decided against entering the Trans-Pacific Strategic EconomicPartnership Agreement that would have given America an upper hand and a controlling interest in trade agreements with all the Pacific Rim countries in one fell swoop.. Trump actually turned down the TPP agreement because Obama was for it, and this in the face of the only one thing that Republicans supported Obama on. They, like Obama, saw this as a next to a perfect opportunity for freezing China out of the Partnership while gaining the advantage of winning a free trade agreement with all countries across the entire and the important economically growing Pacific Rim.. Trump mistakenly believed that CHINA was the main partner in the TPP agreement, but it was not until the USA pulled out, that the rest of the Rim countries decided to allow China entry; they had been counting on America to be the go-to leading partner for the entire partnership. Trump was able to snatch defeat from the jaws of an easy victory!. Trump has decided to go it alone and has hit China as well as a number of favored counties with tariffs, a move from which neither the USA or these countries will benefit. The tariffs have already decidedly increased hostilities, bad will, and has already meant countervailing restrictions as both China and friendly countries have raised tariffs on the importation of American Goods and services.. American soybean farmers are already looking at loses of $3.2 billion against next year crops and the risk of possibly losing the very markets that Trump has attacked with unwanted tariffs, as these importers become conditioned to stay with their new source of supply once tariffs are inevitability withdrawn. With $16 billion worth of Chinese imports, global trade relationships are changing in ways that could eventually leave American farmers out in the cold.. Where farmers have worked tirelessly to build relationships with importers worldwide, they find that these hard-won markets are now being taken over by Brazil, Canada, Argentina, or Russia – among other competitors. No aid or financial support will bring back those markets. And even if the trade war ended tomorrow, the damage to important and lucrative relationships with buyers has been done.. Trump consistently oversimplifies the complexities of policy issues to the detriment of those who elected him. As an international senior executive of a major Fortune 500 company, I have seen it close up and visited markets where America had a solid lock on goods and services and I can vouch for the fact that global trade is about more than tariffs. It includes a complex, interconnected network of suppliers, regulators, inspectors, shipping routes, and value chains. It’s built on relationships, cost, and reliability. Unfortunately, Trump only determines policies and makes decisions on one thing, dollars, and cents.. Most importantly, competition is fierce and growing. While tariffs can be turned on and off quickly, building – or reclaiming – trade relationships can take decades. This is what’s really at stake here. Unfortunately Trump, who is looking for an easy win, either doesn’t get it or doesn’t care. Either way, the USA is the loser for Trump’s lack of leadership, interest, care, and understanding.As it stands America” families will be paying an additional $500 to $800 because of the tariffs which, in spite of Trump’s lies that they are being added to the USA treasury, are in fact a tax on families.The May 10th. tariff hike to 25% on a bulk of U.S. imports from China will cost the American economy $62 billion by next year, according to data from Oxford Economics.That total translates to $490 per household. More extreme protectionist policies would cost $800 per household.“While negotiations are ongoing, and the possibility of a deal remains significant, a further escalation of trade tensions would have dire consequences for both protagonists and the rest of the world, says Gregory Daco, Oxford Economics chief U.S. economist” Source: Trump's new tariffs will cost Americans about $500 per household, by one estimate. This is a guy who is becoming more and more isolated and convinced that he doesn’t need counsel or advice as he has supreme confidence in his own ability. This means certain disaster for the country, a definite certainty if there is an emergency whether domestic or international in nature.. Trump is fixated on the mistaken notion that trading partners are responsible for screwing America by holding fast to the notion that both allies and foes are accountable for America’s economic decline because of America’s imbalance of trade. Trump bases this false notion on his take that America is losing economic advantage and by extension, respect for him as president. This is manifested in his rants about reciprocal trade. In turn, he has gone ahead with fights with virtually the world and put in place self-defeating tariffs in order to address the deficit, specifically caused, according to him, by an” imbalance of trade.”And he has failed miserably: WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. trade deficit reached its highest sum ever last year, defying President Donald Trump's efforts and promises to shrink it through his economic policies. ... The government said Wednesday that the U.S. trade gap in goods and services reached $621 billion last year, its highest total since 2008. Source: Associated Press. Trump fails to understand that an American trade deficit with another country doesn’t mean that that country is taking advantage of the USA, it means that Americans want and purchase goods and services equal to the amount of that deficit. in other words, they are getting goods that they want and for which they pay, choosing Chinese over American produced goods. It is called free trade, a position that Republicans held as sacrosanct and inviolable down through the last 70 years.WHAT IS THE TRADE GAP?“Trump often misrepresents the trade deficit. He has frequently labeled it an outright economic loss. “We’ve been losing, on average, $375 billion a year with China,” the president said in February, referring to the 2017 deficit in goods between the United States and China. That imbalance surged to $419.2 billion in 2018 under Trump’s watch. Yet the trade gap isn’t an outright loss. It simply reflects the greater value of what the United States imports compared to what it exports. And it’s not necessarily a cause for concern.” Source: Associated Press.Trump is fixating on the wrong data and drawing the wrong conclusions. This is not in any way to suggest that China is not a problem, they are. But going it alone and shunning the assistance of America’s allies who have the same issues with China while failing to call on the WTO ( World Trade Organization that rules on unfair trade practices) is just another example of Trump’s bull-headed stupidity and his claim that “ only he can fix it”.Americans want and are willing to buy cheap stuff rather than support more expensive American manufacturers. They have a choice and they choose the cheaper goods. For all his misplaced promises and bluster, Trump’s trade policies are a complete bust. “ U.S. deficits in goods with China and Mexico surged to record highs. As president, Trump’s signature effort to stimulate U.S. growth — deficit-funded tax cuts — likely helped fuel the willingness of American corporations and households to spend, including on imported goods. That is especially true at a time when much of the rest of the economic world has weakened and is less likely to buy U.S. goods. The result has been more imports than exports.What’s more, the tariffs Trump imposed on steel, aluminum and hundreds of billions’ worth of Chinese goods likely contributed to the trend: During 2018, American companies that import goods from China appeared to accelerate their spending on them to avoid Trump’s future import taxes. Source: The Associated Press. The turbulence and uncertainty caused by Trump’s trade war have created a geo-economic feeding frenzy. U.S. competitors from Argentina to Ukraine are aggressively working to eat into markets once dominated by American farmers. But according to Trump “Only he can get it done”, “ only he alone can fix it” and fix it he has!!!, Perhaps without repair or at the very best, chances are that it will take years of hard slogging and lower selling prices resulting in lost profits to win back what had been exclusively America’s to lose.· Trump has relentlessly sought to take down or cripple organizations like NATO and the WTO and the UN; institutions that have presented the world with both stability and a bulwark against aggressive and hostile rogue nations· Trump furiously worked at alienating the US’s closest and strongest allies with the mistaken notion that they were screwing America, when in fact America is going through as is the world, a period of transformation where automation and lack of skills have caused high paying manufacturing jobs to disappear or for greedy companies that Trump has supported to move offshore.. With AI ( artificial intelligence) on the horizon and China and Russia spending heavily on research and emerging technology, Trump has no plan and no clue.· Trump has cozied up to dictators and expressed admiration for their strong arm anti-democratic leadership that has emboldened them to become more aggressive without what previously had been the USA’s moral authority that had previously held them in check.. He made his presidency a laughing stock around the world causing damage to America’s standing, moral authority, and leadership position.· He gutted the government and put in place a cabinet charged with tearing down the very Departments for which they were put in charge. This resulted in weakening consumer, environmental, safety and underlying health standards at home while causing a detrimental effect on America’s standing abroad· Trump single-handedly made the USA a country where children are ripped from their families, put in cages and traumatized for life. Because of the lack of planning or care in handling what Trump has labeled “rapists and murderers” from “shit hole countries”, kids have been separated never to be reunited with their parents and now at last count, two young children have died in Trump’s administrative so-called “care’.. These and other anti-immigration atrocities have become so normalized that ordinary people are actually arguing about whether or not it’s acceptable· Trump has created a safe atmosphere for racists and violent nationalists to voice their views and come out of the closet for the first time in 50 years. The result, Hate, and Race crimes are at an all-time high under the Trump presidency.· He has cast doubt as to the trustworthiness of societal and governmental institutions, thereby weakening the very fabric of American democracy.· Trump and his administration have transformed the very concept of truth into a post-modern quagmire of double speak and “alternate facts” worthy of Stalin’s communist rule or Hitler’s propaganda machine, undermining (if not completely destroying) the democratic principles on which the USA was founded· He has upset world order by taking an isolationist approach that previously led to the great depression of 1929. As it stands, America’s isolation position has already had a detrimental effect on the world economy, with many economists pointing to the inevitability of a recession. ‘Not my fault’: Trump struggles to defend his record amid setbacks on immigration, trade, North Korea More than halfway through his term, the president has failed to make progress on a number of his top priorities. Source Washington Post· Trump has overturned not only Obama’s policies but arguably the entire Civil Rights movement and the various progressive cultural, economic and societal gains of the twentieth century, including equal pay for equal work, and the protection of unions for the working man· He has encouraged dissent and destabilizing dialogue among staunch US allies, turning allies and friendly nations into enemies· Trump has used the power of his position to enrich himself, his friends and his family, and now has 17 criminal investigations and two guilty findings, all of which is debasing the presidency and is taking time, energy and effort away from the vexing social and economic issues facing the USA.· He has validated the punitive inhumane actions of oppressive governments all over the world· He has single-handedly relinquished any moral high ground that the US still held· Trump managed to get millions to focus on bullshit Trump instigated dramas and Trump made problems instead of policies and issues that actually affected peoples’ lives and that of their family and friends.. Instead of addressing real issues of concern to all Americans, Trump offered empty promises like, having a massive cement wall built across the southern border and having Mexico pay for it, promising health care for all that would be better and cheaper but with no idea or plan on how to accomplish it while at the same time, killing a health plan that Americans have come to love.. There is no end to his lies now approaching 10,000 Know major lies, all given to distract and confuse a concerned public for no other reason than to cover his malpractices, lack of leadership and personal failings.. And as this writing, he has held 800.000 Government workers ransom without pay for a month in order to get his way to put up a wall on the southern border that the majority of people don’t want, experts have told him won’t be effective, and have advised that electronic devices and an increase in border personnel would be a far superior approach, yet Trump believes he is right and they are wrong..Trump claims there is an emergency situation at the southern border that needs to be addressed by a wall, but doesn’t take into account the fact that experts say the wall if built, would take anywhere from 3 to 5 years to complete. So much for responding to what he calls an immediate and pressing emergency.. Trump keeps lying that there is a crisis at the border even though the number of illegal crossings is the lowest it has been in 30 years. Source: NYTimes: “Border Crossings Have Been Declining for Years, Despite Claims of a ‘Crisis of Illegal Immigration’. Once again, Trump uses lies to make a case that no one other than the most gullible believe, and yet he persists with his lies, threats, and bullying for no other reason other than to get his way for a wall that he considered a joke when told to first use it as a rallying call during his campaign. It was initially intended as a mnemonic device to remind him to mention immigration. And interesting enough, when he was elected and placed a call to the President of Mexico, he virtually begged him to go along with the charade for “ political” purposes… LOL. Trump claims there is a humanitarian crisis at the border, and yes there is, but not the one of which he speaks, there is the one created by Trump himself by locking children up in cages and separating literally 1000’s of kids from their parents never to be found again. Neither Trump or his administration have any idea as to who they are or where they went once they were in the USA.. Trump is currently being investigated as a possible Russian Agent by the FBI… wow, now that is a distinction that Obama nor any other former president can claim.. Trump’s public war on the Mueller inquiry has gone on long enough that it is no longer shocking. Trump rages almost daily to his 58 million Twitter followers that Mr. Mueller is on a “witch hunt” and has adopted the language of Mafia bosses by calling those who cooperate with the special counsel “rats.” His lawyer talks openly about a strategy to smear and discredit the special counsel investigation.. The New York Times reveals the extent of an even more sustained, more secretive assault by Mr. Trump on the machinery of federal law enforcement. Interviews with dozens of current and former government officials and others close to Mr. Trump, as well as a review of confidential White House documents, reveal numerous unreported episodes in a two-year drama.. Matthew G. Whitaker, the former acting attorney general, was put under scrutiny by the House for possible perjury. But Whitaker was just the warm act now that Trump appointed W. Barr as his permanent Attorney General.. Barr has proven himself to be no more than a toady for Trump by acting as his personal lawyer while denying any neutrality and supporting Trump in his every attempt to thwart the House of Commons in their oversight efforts to investigate Trump, his Cabinet and their work in order to prevent the Russians from once again interfering in the upcoming elections by supporting Trump in his 2020 re-election run.. Trump has spent much of his time venting publicly about there being “no collusion” with Russia before the 2016 election, which has diverted attention from a growing body of evidence that he has tried to impede the various investigations. Yet the Mueller report shows at least 185 cases where the Trump campaign interacted with Russians in order to gain an advantage for Trump in the run-up to the 2016 Presidential election.. This is death by a million cuts. The public is exhausted and overwhelmed by the transgressions, lies, larceny, and the illegal activity of this President and his corrupt family. Copious like pebbles on a beach, any one of these misdeeds would have created a volcanic eruption for any other President. Trump has always felt that being outrageous in public is a defense like hiding in plain sight ..thankfully the law does not work that way. The public needs relief.. The facts show that Trump sold out to Putin and the Russians for financial gain and is a traitor to his own country. Do I need to say more?All of the foregoing is what I consider what Trump is “ good at” and the main points of credit that can be honestly listed in praise of this carbuncle on humanity, this open sore called the Trump “presidency”.

History(1850–1969) - In 1844, 23-year-old Henry Lehman, the son of a Jewish cattle merchant, immigrated to the United States from Rimpar, Bavaria.He settled in Montgomery, Alabama, where he opened a dry-goods store, "H. Lehman". In 1847, following the arrival of his brother Emanuel Lehman, the firm became "H. Lehman and Bro." With the arrival of their youngest brother, Mayer Lehman, in 1850, the firm changed its name again and "Lehman Brothers" was founded.During the 1850s, cotton was one of the most important crops in the United States. Capitalizing on cotton's high market value, the three brothers began to routinely accept raw cotton from customers as payment for merchandise, eventually beginning a second business trading in cotton. Within a few years this business grew to become the most significant part of their operation. Following Henry's death from yellow fever in 1855, the remaining brothers continued to focus on their commodities-trading/brokerage operations.The Lehmans were also involved in the Atlantic slave trade in the 1850s.By 1858, the center of cotton trading had shifted from the South to New York City, where factors and commission houses were based. Lehman opened its first branch office at 119 Liberty Street and 32-year-old Emanuel relocated there to run the office. In 1862, facing difficulties as a result of the Civil War, the firm teamed up with a cotton merchant named John Durr to form Lehman, Durr & Co Following the war the company helped finance Alabama's reconstruction. The firm's headquarters were eventually moved to New York City, where it helped found the New York Cotton Exchange in 1870; Emanuel sat on the board of governors until 1884. The firm also dealt in the emerging market for railroad bonds and entered the financial-advisory business.Lehman became a member of the Coffee Exchange as early as 1883 and finally the New York Stock Exchange in 87. In 1899, it underwrote its first public offering, the preferred and common stock of the International Steam Pump Company.Despite the offering of International Steam, the firm's real shift from being a commodities house to a house of issue did not begin until 1906. In that year, under Emanuel's son Philip Lehman, the firm partnered with Goldman, Sachs & Co., to bring the General Cigar Co. to market, followed closely by Sears, Roebuck and Company. During the following two decades, almost one hundred new issues were underwritten by Lehman, many times in conjunction with Goldman, Sachs. Among these were F.W. Woolworth Company, May Department Stores Company, Gimbel Brothers, Inc., R.H. Macy & Company, The Studebaker Corporation, the B.F. Goodrich Co. and Endicott Johnson Corporation.Following Philip Lehman's retirement in 1925, his son Robert "Bobbie" Lehman took over as head of the firm. During Bobbie's tenure, the company weathered the capital crisis of the Great Depression by focusing on venture capital while the equities market recovered.Traditionally a family-only partnership, in 1924, John M. Hancock became the first non-family member to join the firm, followed by Monroe C. Gutman and Paul Mazur in 1927. By 1928, the firm moved to its now famous One William Street location.In the 1930s, Lehman underwrote the initial public offering of the first television manufacturer, DuMont, and helped fund the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). It also helped finance the rapidly growing oil industry, including the companies Halliburton and Kerr-McGee. In the 1950s, Lehman underwrote the IPO of Digital Equipment Corporation. Later, it arranged the acquisition of Digital by Compaq.(1969–1984) - Robert Lehman died in 1969 after 44 years as the patriarch of the firm, leaving no member of the Lehman family actively involved with the partnership. Robert's death, coupled with a lack of a clear successor from within the Lehman family left a void in the company. At the same time, Lehman was facing strong headwinds amidst the difficult economic environment of the early 1970s. By 1972, the firm was facing hard times and in 1973, Pete Peterson, chairman and chief executive officer of the Bell & Howell Corporation, was brought in to save the firm.Under Peterson's leadership as chairman and CEO, the firm acquired Abraham & Co. in 1975, and two years later merged with the venerable, but struggling, Kuhn, Loeb & Co., to form Lehman Brothers, Kuhn, Loeb Inc., the country's fourth-largest investment bank, behind Salomon Brothers, Goldman Sachs and First Boston. Peterson led the firm from significant operating losses to five consecutive years of record profits with a return on equity among the highest in the investment-banking industry.By the early 1980s, hostilities between the firm's investment bankers and traders (who were driving most of the firm's profits) prompted Peterson to promote Lewis Glucksman, the firm's President, COO and former trader, to be his co-CEO in May 1983. Glucksman introduced a number of changes that had the effect of increasing tensions, which when coupled with Glucksman’s management style and a downturn in the markets, resulted in a power struggle that ousted Peterson and left Glucksman as the sole CEO.Upset bankers who had soured over the power struggle, left the company. Stephen A. Schwarzman, chairman of the firm's M&A committee, recalled in a February 2003 interview with Private Equity International that "Lehman Brothers had an extremely competitive internal environment, which ultimately became dysfunctional." The company suffered under the disintegration, and Glucksman was pressured into selling the firm.Merger with American Express (1984–1994) - Shearson/American Express, an American Express-owned securities company focused on brokerage rather than investment banking, acquired Lehman in 1984, for $360 million. On May 11, the combined firms became Shearson Lehman/American Express. In 1988, Shearson Lehman/American Express and E.F. Hutton & Co. merged as Shearson Lehman Hutton Inc.From 1983 to 1990, Peter A. Cohen was CEO and chairman of Shearson Lehman Brothers, where he led the one billion dollar purchase of E.F. Hutton to form Shearson Lehman Hutton. During this period, Shearson Lehman was aggressive in building its leveraged finance business in the model of rival Drexel Burnham Lambert. In 1989, Shearson backed F. Ross Johnson's management team in its attempted management buyout of RJR Nabisco but were ultimately outbid by private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, who was backed by Drexel.Divestment and independence (1994–2008) - In 1993, under newly appointed CEO, Harvey Golub, American Express began to divest itself of its banking and brokerage operations. It sold its retail brokerage and asset management operations to Primerica and in 1994 it spun off Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb in an initial public offering, as Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc.Despite rumors that it would be acquired again, Lehman performed quite well under chairman and CEO Richard S. Fuld, Jr.. By 2008, Fuld had been with the company for 30 years, and would be the longest-tenured CEO on Wall Street. Fuld had steered Lehman through the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, a period where the firm's share price dropped to $22 USD in 1998, but he was said to have underestimated the downturn in the US housing market and its effect on Lehman's mortgage bond underwriting business. Fuld kept his job as the subprime mortgage crisis took hold, while CEOs of rivals like Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Citigroup were forced to resign. In addition, Lehman's board of directors, which included retired CEOs like Vodafone's Christopher Gent and IBM's John Akers were reluctant to challenge Fuld as the firm's share price spiraled lower.Fuld had a succession of "number twos" under him, usually titled as president and chief operating officer. Chris Pettit was Fuld's second-in-command for two decades until November 26, 1996, when he resigned as president and board member. Pettit lost a power struggle with his deputies (Steve Lessing, Tom Tucker, and Joseph M. Gregory) back on March 15 that year that caused him to relinquish its COO title, likely brought about after the three men found out about Pettit's extramarital affairs, which violated Fuld's unwritten rules on marriage and social etiquette. Bradley Jack and Joseph M. Gregory were appointed co-COOs in 2002, but Jack was demoted to the office of the chairman in May 2004 and departed in June 2005 with a severance package of $80 million, making Gregory the sole COO. While Fuld was considered the "face" of Lehman brothers, Gregory was in charge of day-to-day operations and he influenced culture to drive the bottom line. Gregory was demoted on June 12, 2008 and replaced as president and COO by Bart McDade, who had been serving as head of Equities, and McDade would see Lehman through bankruptcy. McDade would later be one of a handful of Lehman executives offered a position with Barclays after their acquisition; he would step down after less than two months.In 2001, the firm acquired the private-client services, or "PCS", business of Cowen & Co.and later, in 2003, aggressively re-entered the asset-management business, which it had exited in 1989.[45] Beginning with $2 billion in assets under management, the firm acquired the Crossroads Group, the fixed-income division of Lincoln Capital Management and Neuberger Berman. These businesses, together with the PCS business and Lehman's private-equity business, comprised the Investment Management Division, which generated approximately $3.1 billion in net revenue and almost $800 million in pretax income in 2007. Prior to going bankrupt, the firm had in excess of $275 billion in assets under management. Altogether, since going public in 1994, the firm had increased net revenues over 600% from $2.73 billion to $19.2 billion and had increased employee headcount over 230% from 8,500 to almost 28,600.At the 2008 ALB China Law Awards, Lehman Brothers was crowned:• Deal of the Year – Debt Market Deal of the Year• Deal of the Year – Equity Market Deal of the YearResponse to September 11, 2001 attacks - On September 11, 2001, Lehman occupied three floors of World Trade Center where one of its employees was killed in the terrorist attacks of that day. Its global headquarters in Three World Financial Center were severely damaged and rendered unusable by falling debris, displacing over 6,500 employees. The bank recovered quickly and rebuilt its presence. Trading operations moved across the Hudson River to its Jersey City, New Jersey, facilities, where an impromptu trading floor was built in a hotel and brought online less than forty-eight hours after the attacks. When stock markets reopened on September 17, 2001, Lehman's sales and trading capabilities were restored.In the ensuing months, the firm fanned out its operations across the New York City metropolitan area in over 40 temporary locations. The investment-banking division converted the first-floor lounges, restaurants, and all 665 guestrooms of the Sheraton Manhattan Hotel into office space.The bank also experimented with flextime (to share office space) and telecommuting via virtual private networking. In October 2001, Lehman purchased a 32-story, 1,050,000-square-foot (98,000 m2) office building for a reported sum of $700 million. The building, located at 745 Seventh Avenue, had recently been completed, and not yet occupied, by rival Morgan Stanley.With Morgan Stanley's world headquarters located only two blocks away at 1585 Broadway, in the wake of the attacks the firm was re-evaluating its office plans which would have put over 10,000 employees in the Times Square area of New York City. Lehman began moving into the new facility in January and finished in March 2002, a move that significantly boosted morale throughout the firm.The firm was criticized for not moving back to its former headquarters in lower Manhattan. Following the attacks, only Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch, of the major firms, remained in the downtown area. Lehman, however, pointed to the facts that it was committed to stay in New York City, that the new headquarters represented an ideal circumstance where the firm was desperate to buy and Morgan Stanley was desperate to sell, that when the new building was purchased, the structural integrity of Three World Financial Center had not yet been given a clean bill of health, and that the company could not have waited until May 2002 for repairs to Three World Financial Center to conclude.After the attacks, Lehman's management placed increased emphasis on business continuity planning. Unlike its rivals, the company was unusually concentrated for a bulge-bracket investment bank. For example, Morgan Stanley maintains a 750,000-square-foot (70,000 m2) trading-and-banking facility in Westchester County, New York. The trading floor of UBS is located in Stamford, Connecticut. Merrill Lynch's asset-management division is located in Plainsboro Township, New Jersey. Aside from its headquarters in Three World Financial Center, Lehman maintained operations-and-backoffice facilities in Jersey City, space that the firm considered leaving prior to 9/11. The space was not only retained, but expanded, including the construction of a backup-trading facility. In addition, telecommuting technology first rolled out in the days following the attacks to allow employees to work from home was expanded and enhanced for general use throughout the firmJune 2003 SEC litigation - In June 2003, the company was one of ten firms which simultaneously entered into a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Office of the New York State Attorney General and various other securities regulators, regarding undue influence over each firm's research analysts by its investment-banking divisions. Specifically, regulators alleged that the firms had improperly associated analyst compensation with the firms' investment-banking revenues, and promised favorable, market-moving research coverage, in exchange for underwriting opportunities. The settlement, known as the "global settlement", provided for total financial penalties of $1.4 billion, including $80 million against Lehman, and structural reforms, including a complete separation of investment banking departments from research departments, no analyst compensation, directly or indirectly, from investment-banking revenues, and the provision of free, independent, third-party, research to the firms' clients.Rise of mortgage origination (1997-2006) - Lehman was one of the first Wall Street firms to move into the business of mortgage origination. In 1997, Lehman bought Colorado-based lender, Aurora Loan Services, an Alt-A lender. In 2000, to expand their mortgage origination pipeline, Lehman purchased West Coast subprime mortgage lender BNC Mortgage LLC. Lehman quickly became a force in the subprime market. By 2003 Lehman made $18.2 billion in loans and ranked third in lending. By 2004, this number topped $40 billion. By 2006, Aurora and BNC were lending almost $50 billion per month. Lehman had morphed into a real estate hedge fund disguised as an investment bank. By 2008, Lehman had assets of $680 billion supported by only $22.5 billion of firm capital. From an equity position, its risky commercial real estate holdings were three times greater than capital. In such a highly leveraged structure, a 3 to 5 percent decline in real estate values would wipeout all capital.Collapse - A March 2010 report by the court-appointed examiner indicated that Lehman executives regularly used cosmetic accounting gimmicks at the end of each quarter to make its finances appear less shaky than they really were. This practice was a type of repurchase agreement that temporarily removed securities from the company's balance sheet. However, unlike typical repurchase agreements, these deals were described by Lehman as the outright sale of securities and created "a materially misleading picture of the firm’s financial condition in late 2007 and 2008."Subprime Mortgage Crisis - In August 2007 the firm closed its subprime lender, BNC Mortgage, eliminating 1,200 positions in 23 locations, and took an after-tax charge of $25 million and a $27 million reduction in goodwill. Lehman said that poor market conditions in the mortgage space "necessitated a substantial reduction in its resources and capacity in the subprime space".In 2008, Lehman faced an unprecedented loss to the continuing subprime mortgage crisis. Lehman's loss was a result of having held on to large positions in subprime and other lower-rated mortgage tranches when securitizing the underlying mortgages; whether Lehman did this because it was simply unable to sell the lower-rated bonds, or made a conscious decision to hold them, is unclear. In any event, huge losses accrued in lower-rated mortgage-backed securities throughout 2008. In the second fiscal quarter, Lehman reported losses of $2.8 billion and was forced to sell off $6 billion in assets. In the first half of 2008 alone, Lehman stock lost 73% of its value as the credit market continued to tighten. In August 2008, Lehman reported that it intended to release 6% of its work force, 1,500 people, just ahead of its third-quarter-reporting deadline in September.In September 2007, Joe Gregory appointed Erin Callan as CFO. On March 16, 2008, after rival Bear Stearns was taken over by JP Morgan Chase in a fire sale, market analysts suggested that Lehman would be the next major investment bank to fall. Callan fielded Lehman's first quarter conference call, where the firm posted a profit of $489 million, compared to Citigroup's $5.1 billion and Merrill Lynch's $1.97 billion losses which was Lehman’s 55th consecutive profitable quarter. The firm's stock price leapt 46 percent after that announcement.On June 9, 2008, Lehman Brothers announced US$2.8 billion second-quarter loss, its first since being spun off from American Express, as market volatility rendered many of its hedges ineffective during that time. Lehman also reported that it had raised a further $6 billion in capital. As a result, there was major management shakeup, in which Hugh "Skip" McGee III (head of investment banking) held a meeting with senior staff to strip Fuld and his lieutenants of their authority. Consequently, Joe Gregory agreed to resign as president and COO, and afterward he told Erin Callan that she had to resign as CFO. Callan was appointed CFO of Lehman in 2008 but served only for six months, before departing after her mentor Joe Gregory was demoted. Bart McDade was named to succeed Gregory as president and COO, when several senior executives threatened to leave if he was not promoted. McDade took charge and brought back Michael Gelband and Alex Kirk, who had previously been pushed out of the firm by Gregory for not taking risks. Although Fuld remained CEO, he soon became isolated from McDade's team.On August 22, 2008, shares in Lehman closed up 5% (16% for the week) on reports that the state-controlled Korea Development Bank was considering buying the bank. Most of those gains were quickly eroded as news came in that Korea Development Bank was "facing difficulties pleasing regulators and attracting partners for the deal." It culminated on September 9, when Lehman's shares plunged 45% to $7.79, after it was reported that the state-run South Korean firm had put talks on hold.Investor confidence continued to erode as Lehman's stock lost roughly half its value and pushed the S&P 500 down 3.4% on September 9. The Dow Jones lost 300 points the same day on investors' concerns about the security of the bank. The U.S. government did not announce any plans to assist with any possible financial crisis that emerged at Lehman.The next day, Lehman announced a loss of $3.9 billion and its intent to sell off a majority stake in its investment-management business, which includes Neuberger Berman. The stock slid seven percent that day. Lehman, after earlier rejecting questions on the sale of the company, was reportedly searching for a buyer as its stock price dropped another 40 percent on September 11, 2008.Just before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, executives at Neuberger Berman sent e-mail memos suggesting, among other things, that the Lehman Brothers' top people forgo multimillion-dollar bonuses to "send a strong message to both employees and investors that management is not shirking accountability for recent performance."Lehman Brothers Investment Management Director George Herbert Walker IV dismissed the proposal, going so far as to actually apologize to other members of the Lehman Brothers executive committee for the idea of bonus reduction having been suggested. He wrote, "Sorry team. I am not sure what's in the water at Neuberger Berman. I'm embarrassed and I apologize."Short-selling allegations - During hearings on the bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers and bailout of AIG before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, former Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld said a host of factors including a crisis of confidence and naked short-selling attacks followed by false rumors contributed to both the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. House committee Chairman Henry Waxman said the committee received thousands of pages of internal documents from Lehman and these documents portray a company in which there was "no accountability for failure".An article by journalist Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone contended that naked short selling contributed to the demise of both Lehman and Bear Stearns. A study by finance researchers at the University of Oklahoma Price College of Business studied trading in financial stocks, including Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, and found "no evidence that stock price declines were caused by naked short selling".Bankruptcy - On Saturday, September 13, 2008, Timothy F. Geithner, then the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, called a meeting on the future of Lehman, which included the possibility of an emergency liquidation of its assets. Lehman reported that it had been in talks with Bank of America and Barclays for the company's possible sale; however, both Barclays and Bank of America ultimately declined to purchase the entire company, in the former case because the British government (in particular, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Alastair Darling and the CEO of the Financial Services Authority Hector Sants) refused to allow the transaction at the last minute, quoting stockholder regulations in the UK, despite a deal having apparently been completed.The next day, Sunday, September 14, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) offered an exceptional trading session to allow market participants to offset positions in various derivatives on the condition of a Lehman bankruptcy later that day. Although the bankruptcy filing missed the deadline, many dealers honored the trades they made in the special session.Shortly before 1 am Monday morning (UTC−5), Lehman Brothers Holdings announced it would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection citing bank debt of $613 billion, $155 billion in bond debt, and assets worth $639 billion. It further announced that its subsidiaries would continue to operate as normal. A group of Wall Street firms agreed to provide capital and financial assistance for the bank's orderly liquidation and the Federal Reserve, in turn, agreed to a swap of lower-quality assets in exchange for loans and other assistance from the government. The morning witnessed scenes of Lehman employees removing files, items with the company logo, and other belongings from the world headquarters at 745 Seventh Avenue. The spectacle continued throughout the day and into the following day.Later that day, the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) suspended Lehman's Australian subsidiary as a market participant after clearing-houses terminated contracts with the firm. Lehman shares tumbled over 90% on September 15, 2008. The Dow Jones closed down just over 500 points on September 15, 2008, which was at the time the largest drop in a single day since the days following the attacks on September 11, 2001.In the United Kingdom, the investment bank went into administration with PricewaterhouseCoopers appointed as administrators. In Japan, the Japanese branch, Lehman Brothers Japan Inc., and its holding company filed for civil reorganization on September 16, 2008, in Tokyo District Court. On September 17, 2008, the New York Stock Exchange delisted Lehman Brothers.On March 16, 2011 some three years after filing for bankruptcy and following a filing in a Manhattan U.S. bankruptcy court, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc announced it would seek creditor approval of its reorganization plan by October 14 followed by a confirmation hearing to follow on November 17.LiquidationBarclays acquisition - On September 16, 2008, Barclays PLC announced that they would acquire a "stripped clean" portion of Lehman for $1.75 billion, including most of Lehman's North America operations. On September 20, 2008, a revised version of the deal, a $1.35 billion (£700 million) plan for Barclays to acquire the core business of Lehman (mainly its $960-million headquarters, a 38-story office building in Midtown Manhattan, with responsibility for 9,000 former employees), was approved. Manhattan court bankruptcy Judge James Peck, after a 7-hour hearing, ruled: "I have to approve this transaction because it is the only available transaction. Lehman Brothers became a victim, in effect the only true icon to fall in a tsunami that has befallen the credit markets. This is the most momentous bankruptcy hearing I've ever sat through. It can never be deemed precedent for future cases. It's hard for me to imagine a similar emergency."Luc Despins, then a partner at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, the creditors committee counsel, said: "The reason we're not objecting is really based on the lack of a viable alternative. We did not support the transaction because there had not been enough time to properly review it."[citation needed] In the amended agreement, Barclays would absorb $47.4 billion in securities and assume $45.5 billion in trading liabilities. Lehman's attorney Harvey R. Miller of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, said "the purchase price for the real estate components of the deal would be $1.29 billion, including $960 million for Lehman's New York headquarters and $330 million for two New Jersey data centers. Lehman's original estimate valued its headquarters at $1.02 billion but an appraisal from CB Richard Ellis this week valued it at $900 million." Further, Barclays will not acquire Lehman's Eagle Energy unit, but will have entities known as Lehman Brothers Canada Inc, Lehman Brothers Sudamerica, Lehman Brothers Uruguay and its Private Investment Management business for high-net-worth individuals. Finally, Lehman will retain $20 billion of securities assets in Lehman Brothers Inc that are not being transferred to Barclays. Barclays acquired a potential liability of $2.5 billion to be paid as severance, if it chooses not to retain some Lehman employees beyond the guaranteed 90 days.Nomura acquisition - Nomura Holdings, Japan's top brokerage firm, agreed to buy the Asian division of Lehman Brothers for $225 million and parts of the European division for a nominal fee of $2. It would not take on any trading assets or liabilities in the European units. Nomura negotiated such a low price because it acquired only Lehman's employees in the regions, and not its stocks, bonds or other assets. The last Lehman Brothers Annual Report identified that these non-US subsidiaries of Lehman Brothers were responsible for over 50% of global revenue produced.Sale of asset management businesses - On September 29, 2008, Lehman agreed to sell Neuberger Berman, part of its investment management business, to a pair of private-equity firms, Bain Capital Partners and Hellman & Friedman, for $2.15 billion. The transaction was expected to close in early 2009, subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, but a competing bid was entered by the firm's management, who ultimately prevailed in a bankruptcy auction on December 3, 2008. Creditors of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. retain a 49% common equity interest in the firm, now known as Neuberger Berman Group LLC. In Europe, the Quantitative Asset Management Business has been acquired back by its employees on November 13, 2008 and has been renamed back to TOBAM.Financial fallout - Lehman's bankruptcy was the largest failure of an investment bank since Drexel Burnham Lambert collapsed amid fraud allegations 18 years prior. Immediately following the bankruptcy filing, an already distressed financial market began a period of extreme volatility, during which the Dow experienced its largest one day point loss, largest intra-day range (more than 1,000 points) and largest daily point gain. What followed was what many have called the "perfect storm" of economic distress factors and eventually a $700bn bailout package (Troubled Asset Relief Program) prepared by Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury, and approved by Congress. The Dow eventually closed at a new six-year low of 7,552.29 on November 20, followed by a further drop to 6626 by March of the next year. Durvexity spiked, due to funding issues at the major investment banks.The fall of Lehman also had a strong effect on small private investors such as bond holders and holders of so-called Minibonds. In Germany structured products, often based on an index, were sold mostly to private investors, elderly, retired persons, students and families. Most of those now worthless derivatives were sold by the German arm of Citigroup, the German Citibank now owned by Crédit Mutuel.Ongoing litigation - On March 11, 2010, Anton R. Valukas, a court-appointed examiner, published the results of its year-long investigation into the finances of Lehman Brothers. This report revealed that Lehman Brothers used an accounting procedure termed repo 105 to temporarily exchange $50 billion of assets into cash just before publishing its financial statements. The action could be seen to implicate both Ernst & Young, the bank's accountancy firm and Richard S. Fuld, Jr, the former CEO. This could potentially lead to Ernst & Young being found guilty of financial malpractice and Fuld facing time in prison.According to The Wall Street Journal, in March 2011, the SEC announced that they weren't confident that they could prove that Lehman Brothers violated US laws in its accounting practices.[In October 2011 the administrators of Lehman Brothers Holding Inc. lost their appeal to overturn a court order forcing them to pay £148 million into their underfunded pensions plan.As of January 2016, Lehman has already paid more than $105 billion to its unsecured creditors. In addition, JPMorgan will pay $1.42 billion in cash to settle a lawsuit accusing JPMorgan of draining Lehman Brothers liquidity right before the crash. The settlement would permit another $1.496 billion to be paid to creditors and a separate $76 million deposit.Source: Lehman Brothers - Wikipedia