In Lehmann Sask

JAMA  25 Aug 2010  Vol 304
859    The first paper in JAMA comes from Denmark for a second week running, meaning that I have to rummage through Hamlet yet again for a suitable quotation. But alas (poor Yorick), I can find nothing at all about antiviral drugs used in pregnancy. I can’t even find anything related to birth registration or congenital defects, though I’m sure Shakespeare must have put them somewhere in this all-embracing work. Anyway, you’ll gather that we’re talking here about shingles treatments used in pregnant Danish women, who are all on an enormous national database. Aciclovir and valaciclovir used in the first trimester of pregnancy are not associated with any increase in birth defects, while too few women used famciclovir for us to be able to tell.
890    When our practice took part in Anthony Harnden’s ground-breaking studies of pertussis in the community, we were amazed to find that about one in four adults with persistent cough showed a recent antibody response to pertussis. The cough can go on for six months or more, and classically it comes in unstoppable paroxysms with long cough-free intervals between. The latest episode of the Rational Clinical Examination series confirms that these features are moderately predictive, and that whooping and vomiting are also useful pointers in children, but that no combination of clinical findings is actually diagnostic for pertussis. You make the diagnosis – usually after any treatment is useful – by per-nasal swab or PCR or antibody assays. We have just had our local access to antibody testing withdrawn on grounds of cost; but although testing does not allow a cure, at least it  gives a diagnosis and spares further investigation.

NEJM  26 Aug 2010  Vol 363
809    You don’t look at papers on metastatic melanoma to get cheered up – the mean survival time is usually around 8 months – but there’s a definite glimmer of sunshine in this study. It’s odd that the NEJM didn’t run this paper alongside the one on ipilimumab for MM last week. That treatment resulted in a few long-term survivors and a few drug-related deaths: here there are more 18-month survivors and no treatment-related deaths. The drug is an oral agent which currently rejoices in the code name PLX4032, and it inhibits a key melanoma oncogene, encoding the serine-threonine protein kinase B-RAF. Most melanoma cells carry this mutation and the drug homes in on them like a Messerschmitt 109, attacking the B-RAF. Unfortunately most of the cells learn to take evasive action sooner or later, but this is a definite breakthrough.

820    If you have autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease, your kidneys grow and form cysts under the influence of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway. It happens that the immune suppressant drugs sirolimus and everolimus inhibit the mTOR pathway, so a Swiss and a German team have carried out randomised trials on the two agents to see if they would delay progression in PKD. Sirolimus does nothing, while tacrolimus shows some slowing of kidney volume accretion but has no effect on declining renal function. A nice idea, but a failure so far.

852   In fact there are lots of nice ideas about in the treatment of mendelian disorders, though they are all quite tough to follow. When I first tried to download the PDF of this review about them, I got a scrambled version with the words “Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay” poetically marooned between Ljobt f ;!Bolf o{ zn f lu buusbot gf !b!qi and !Czqbt t !pgdbluf sn jobcpo!dpeo!czlu. The unscrambled version isn’t that different in places: I particularly commend to your attention the section on Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome and the role of the enzyme ZMPSTE24. But really, one does need to engage with some of this stuff: for example, genomic understanding of pathological pathways may be leading to the development of a drug which slows down the progression of severe life-threatening Marfan’s syndrome by 90%. Some of the future of medicine genuinely lies in this direction.

Lancet  28 Aug 2010  Vol 376
687   Trastuzumab got its commercial name Herceptin from the fact that it inhibits human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). Its use in advanced breast cancer has triggered much debate about cancer drug rationing, and that’s bound to continue now that the ToGA trial has shown that it can also prolong survival in advanced gastric and gastro-oesophageal junction cancers which express HER 2. The trial was paid for by F Hoffmann-La Roche, whose pricing policy means that the drug costs about £55K per life-year gained: which, as the editorial states (p.659), “reiterates the important moral question – what is the justification for introducing a treatment that might enable one individual to live a few months longer, but will consume, for each person treated, the total yearly health expenditure of scores of their fellow citizens?”

705    “Efficacy of boceprevir, an NS3 protease inhibitor, in combination with peginterferon alfa-2b and ribavirin in treatment-naive patients with genotype 1 hepatitis C infection (SPRINT-1): an open-label, randomised, multicentre phase 2 trial” is not the sort of title to get people crowding around and spilling coffee on you in an attempt to read over your shoulder. But it might just mean a doubling in the success rate of treatment for hepatitis C. The agent is a direct antiviral called boceprevir. If you need to know more, you’ll have to read the paper (but don’t all rush at once, and mind that coffee), plus the accompanying editorial.

717   Gestational trophoblastic disease is a British success story, based at Charing Cross and Sheffield; survival is 98.5%, and if you want to know the detail, read this review. It’s just odd that we haven’t learnt more from this shining example in the centralised treatment of rare cancers, and that other countries have been slow to follow the British example.

730   The relationship between endometriosis and infertility is hard to understand, and the somewhat effortful English used by the three French authors does not always help. The main burden of their review seems to be that surgery works best when deployed early, rather than as a last resort after medical treatment has failed. “When age, ovarian reserve, and male and tubal status permit, surgery should be considered immediately so that time is dedicated to attempts to conceive naturally”. What a splendidly French idea, this dedication: consacrez-vous à l’amour, mes amis!

BMJ  28 Aug 2010  Vol 341
435    Going psychotic in Hong Kong cannot be a pleasant experience for anyone concerned, as there isn’t really enough room; and preventing relapse after a first episode is a worthwhile aim, other things being equal. So this well-conducted double-blind trial of continued quetiapine versus placebo is an important contribution to the slender archives of evidence-based psychiatry. After full recovery from their initial psychosis, four-fifths of people given placebo had a relapse; in those who continued quetiapine, this was reduced to two-fifths.

437   Another important research paper in this week’s BMJ (I can’t really believe I’m writing this) deals with the hoary question of how soon to try again after a miscarriage. As most of you will know by now, the old wives’ tale that you should leave it a while is completely wrong: here is strikingly good evidence from Scotland that the sooner you get on with it, the better the outcome.

439    Patients newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes are often in a state of shock, and the advice they receive can be quite bizarre, as you will see if you go to Healthtalkonline. Nice DESMOND tries to put that right: he consists of a six-hour structured group education programme, aimed at reducing weight and encouraging exercise and an appropriate diet (insofar as we know what that is). This study aims to show that Desmond is worth his money. Well, kind of, if you play around with the QALYs; but you have to agree with the correspondent who wrote in to say that “The difference of 1.1kg in weight, though statistically significant, is not, frankly, terribly impressive.”

444    Some excellent Clinical Reviews have appeared in the BMJ recently and this one on evaluating the child who presents with an acute limp is one of the very best. The lessons are not new – I first learnt them from the works of J Crawford Adams, which appeared in the mid-1950s – but they are vitally important, and here they are backed up with evidence and very clearly set out. Consider the age, look carefully at the hip, follow the modified pGALS examination set out in Box 2. Don’t ever take chances and miss septic arthritis or a slipped upper femoral epiphysis.

Plant of the Week: Sphaeralcea incana

This is the time of year when members of the mallow family come into prominence: in fact Richard Strauss wrote a fifth autumnal Last Song called Malven. But although the sphaeralcea belongs to the mallows, this little shrub is spring-flowering in its native habitat in hot North American deserts.

Our garden is as unlike a hot North American desert as can be; no sand and rattlesnakes here, just wet clay and slugs. Yet this plant is thriving and waving its orange flowers gaily over its attractive wrinkled grey leaves. It’s been doing this for months, after coming through the harsh winter unscathed. A must for a sunny spot in every garden.

The former Lehman Bros. CEO wants us to believe that the largest bankruptcy in Wall Street history was caused by  short sellers  triggering a run on the bank in  the summer of 2008. Two years after  global financial markets were swept by panic, Fuld has not displayed an iota of self-reflection  about the responsibility he and other senior Lehman senior executives  incurred for their own self-directed disaster.

As Forbes pointed out in August, 2008 Lehman was dangerously undercapitalized and holding assets greater than their equity capital that were highly radioactive and deteriorating in value every day. These  suicide bombs included  almost $30 billion of commercial mortgage backed securities– more than any of its better capitalized competitors like Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse. Lehman also owned another $25 billion of residential mortgage backed securities and $12 billion in  LBO loans. Alltold, $76 billion of garbage that might have been worth at best $50 billion. We’ll never know. All we know that when Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson called Fuld in March to hurry home from India because Bear Stearns was melting away fast, all Fuld could ask for was Paulson’s intervention with Russian authorities to allow his private jet to fly over Russia on the trip home. Paulson correctly demurred at this ego-driven nonsense.

Unlike Goldman and Credit Suisse Lehman  had not raced to liquidate this rotten paper but arrogantly thought it could finesse the crisis. And finesse the crisis it did by hiding $50 billion in debt at the close of each quarter so that Fuld’s dreaded enemies– the hedge fund community– would not see Lehman’s dire state. At the time Fuld  fudged the firm’s precarious situation  by telling the investment world “I’m comfortable with our valuations at the end of the second quarter. We have always had a rigorous internal process.”

I happen to know as ell that he never once consulted Lehman senior adviser Felix Rohatyn, who may have been the mot experienced investment banker around to give  counsel on any possible redeeming strategy.

This manipulation of Lehman’s balance sheet made Fuld “at least grossly negligent in causing Lehman Brothers to file misleading periodic reports,” Anton Valukas,  the Chicago lawyer in his official bankruptcy examiner’s report. In reply, Fuld’s personal lawyer claimed he never knew about these accounting transactions– which, if true, underscores just how arrogant and uninformed he was about matters that would cause a trillion  dollars in losses for global financial markets and the loss of thousands of jobs.

Fuld is a classic example of the power of denial and inability to face the truth about his mismanagement of a heralded Wall Street firm. No matter is protestations, his angry face and foolish intemperateness will go down in history with the other symbols of  the meltdown like Bear Stearns chairman Jimmy Cayne’s abject refusal to leave his bridge tournament to return to   the firm’s headquarters. Fiddling while Rome burns.

As a footnote I wasn’t too happy about Fed Chairman Bernanke’s vapid excuse for not helping Lehman; hiding behind the technical defense that it did not have enough assets to put up as collateral for a loan. If he anticipated the severity of the fallout from a Lehman fall, he should have made the loan and taken any heat. Anyway, a source close to Paulson insists that Treasury was told by  Reps. Pelosi, Schumer, Dodd and Frank that there were to be no more bailouts. It is simply outrageous that we have never had full hearings to tell the public the whole story.

I spent the first ten years of my career in Los Angeles as a banker. From 1977 to 1982, I was at Security Pacific, then the sixth largest bank holding company in the United States. The bank was so straight-laced that the saying was, “Have a beer at lunch, don’t bother to come back.” From 1982 to 1987, I was at First Interstate Bancorp, ending up as senior vice president of the Funding Department for the parent company, then the 7th largest bank holding company. Under CEO Joe Pinola and my boss, the CFO Don M. Griffith, the place was filled with honest hardworking people who were trying to do the right thing. The only hint of scandal was on Monday mornings, when I would arrive to find evidence on my office couch that someone had brought their date up to the 58th floor to “see the view.” After Pinola and Griffith retired, the occasional petty thief reared his head. After one of Don Griffith’s successors (“Mr. X.”) as CFO resigned from the company, a large number of computers disappeared from the finance department. This happened immediately after it was announced that Wells Fargo was buying the firm we were constantly being told not to call “FIB.” The police were tipped off and found the PCs in Mr. X’s garage. But that was kid stuff compared to what I saw at Lehman. People in different offices of Lehman at different times in its history may have had a different experience than I had—I certainly hope so. Here’s the PG-13 version of some of the things that happened to me. The names of the bad guys have been changed. They know who they are.

The Prologue: Being Recruited by Lehman in Tokyo in 1987

I let my boss at First Interstate know in late 1986 that I was going to leave FIB, as much fun as it was. I told him I thought someone was going to buy FIB and fire all of the head office staff, especially in finance, so there was no reason to stick around. I couldn’t spell “retention bonus” to save my life. It was the height of the Tokyo bubble and I was ready to go. It was also Bonfire of the Vanities in New York and no one in New York wanted to drop off the map to Tokyo. I got a bunch of offers but the most memorable part of the recruiting process was a dinner with the Fixed Income Department at Lehman Tokyo (then called “Shearson Lehman American Express”) to celebrate their great 1986. There were about 15 people at the dinner in a small French restaurant on the back streets of Roppongi. The host was “Andy,” the American head of fixed income. The group was 80% North American and it got wild pretty fast. We were in an upstairs room with white plaster walls and a brick fire place, which was going full blast, because January in Tokyo can be pretty cold. The crowd was completely drunk in about 45 minutes, except for me because I was interviewing for a job. Before long the traders, whose average age was about 28, were grabbing charcoal out of the fire place and covering the walls in graffiti. After that, 13 of the 15 spent the rest of the dinner admiring a wooden sheep covered with the wool fleece of a lamb and ridiculing the second most senior fixed income guy. The assault was led by A and J, and they tried to make M, a very serious and sincere guy, feel as bad as possible.

The dinner ended when the room was so filled with smoke that no one could stand it anymore. Andy and I were the last ones out, because he was in charge of getting me to join the firm. We were just slamming the door on our cab when the Japanese chef at the restaurant came screaming out the door holding a meat cleaver. Andy, much to my surprise, was dumb enough to roll down the window to see why the guy was so angry (Andy had forgotten the graffiti). My Japanese was much better to Andy’s and I explained that someone had stolen the wooden sheep and the chef wanted it back. Andy grabbed a bunch of 10,000 yen bills out of his pocket, shoved it at the chef, and we raced off.

About six hours later, the next morning, I showed up at the Tokyo office for my formal interview. There was the sheep, right in the middle of the trading floor, balanced on the Bloomberg terminals between A and J. There were no illusions. If I joined Lehman, I knew I was destined for a place with the ambiance of a juvenile detention center.

J did OK. 10 years later, they made him the head of fixed income in Tokyo. After that he became the head of one of the largest overseas offices in the Lehman empire.

My First Day at Lehman in 1987: The Day I Decided to Quit

I took the Lehman offer and went to work on my first day. I was a senior vice president in the investment banking department, and I was assigned to cover about half the big banks, the 3 power companies, NTT, Tokyo Gas, Sony, Canon, and Fujitsu. After 12 hours in the office we went off to an Italian restaurant that’s still around, a place called Sabatini, in Aoyama. There were 8 people there, 3 from a prestigious European firm and the rest from Lehman. The Europeans had just arrived in Tokyo that afternoon. I couldn’t hear much of what was going on, because as Japanese culture dictated, I was at the junior seat at the table. Most of the first year I was in Tokyo, the only thing the Japanese branch manager Matsui thought he needed to teach me was where to sit at a business dinner, which varied by your rank, the ranks of those from Lehman, and the ranks of the people on the client side.

On that day, it was easy. I was in the junior seat and that was fine. I was jet lagged and by 10 pm the business day was 15 hours old. Suddenly everybody started to laugh. I turned to the Lehman guy next to me and said “What’s so funny?” He asked me, “Are you going to go?” I was clueless, and I said “What are you talking about? This is my first day on the job and I don’t know anything.” He explained it like this. “The clients have just reminded us of their need for ‘special services’ from the Japanese girls at the local ‘soap land.’ Tanaka-san on our side always arranges this for them, because the clients have made it clear that if those services are not provided by Lehman, they’ll take their Japanese business somewhere else. So the question is this—Tanaka-san is going to go, and so are a bunch of the rest of us. Are you going to go or not?”

I used jetlag to beg off, and I decided to quit Lehman that night. As an expat in a very expensive city, it took three years to buy a house, rent office space, come up with a business plan, and all the other stuff I had to do before I could actually leave Lehman. But the elapsed time from my first paid minute at Lehman until I decided to quit was 16 hours. I didn’t get a Harvard Ph.D. to work as a pimp.

Lehman Compensation: Direct and Indirect

It took me a while to figure out the compensation system at Lehman. After a while, it was clear that bonuses were very random and had only about a 5 percent correlation with your skill. The offset to that was the fact that the bonus was high enough that Albert Einstein wouldn’t have cared that Barney the dinosaur was making twice as much. Still, everyone around me was bitching that they were underpaid.

The branch manager when I was there was a bigger than life character, a lovable rogue. He looked and sounded exactly like Hideki Matsui, the centerfielder for the New York Yankees now, so I’ll call him Matsui. We were doing a couple of client calls together in late morning, so I hopped in his chauffer driven limousine and we stopped first at an elegant ryotei (a very fancy restaurant which is typically run by very beautiful and elegant ladies with near geisha status). It was only 10 in the morning and the place was closed, but Matsui had something to do. Much to my surprise, he asked me to come in with him rather than waiting in the car. We ended up in a small tatami room talking to one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. She was a kimono clad beauty and obviously she and Matsui knew each other very very very well. She was distraught, and the conversation was too complicated for my Japanese at the time so I wasn’t sure what was going on. At the end, Matsui passed her a very thick sealed envelope, mumbled a long apology, and we got back in the Mercedes.

“Did you follow what was going on?” Matsui asked. Nope, I told him, and he explained. “She asked me for years and years to spend some time with her, and I kept telling her no. Finally I did ‘go out’ with her [he used a cruder phrase in Japanese, often translated as “bop”] but I don’t want to hang around with her any more. So I gave her a few million yen as an apology.”

The chauffer seemed to take all this in as normal and Matsui turned to discussing Saito-san’s compensation. Saito-san was technically my boss, so I just shut up and listened to what Matsui had to say. “Saito-san is always bitching about his compensation, even though he’s very well paid. His problem is that he just doesn’t do what I tell him. I told him ‘Look, just take out a mortgage on your condominium in Hiroo and take the money and buy the stock I tell you to when I tell you to. If you do that, you’ll have more money than you’ll ever need.’ “ He turned back to me, just shaking his head at what a fool Saito-san was for not doing as Matsui said. I concluded, but of course couldn’t prove, that Matsui was an insider in the rampant stock price manipulation of the day and that Saito-san missed a 100% chance to win the lottery.

Supplementing Your Income as an Investment Banker

Matsui called me into his office another time to talk about something, but before he did, he started complaining about Gambino. Gambino was another American investment banker who made John Gotti look like Mother Theresa. It had taken about 10 minutes for me to figure out that Gambino would lie to anyone about anything, sometimes because he thought that would increase his bonus, but often just for fun. He once bragged that he took someone from Lehman New York on a three day tour of the ancient city of Kyoto. Gambino explained that he gave detailed answers to questions about the 2000 year history of Kyoto for three days, never failing to answer in detail. How’d you do that, we asked. “I made it all up,” grinned Gambino.

Today, Matsui was really on Gambino’s case. “I know he’s falsified every expense report he’d ever submitted and I am so pissed off that I can’t prove it.” I knew that Matsui was right, because I’d see Gambino do it. He’d go out strictly for personal purposes and spend $500 to $1000 on a dinner, with one of the investment banking associates in tow. Then the associate would be the witness that there was a client there. Petty stuff. Must have cost Lehman $50,000 a year.

Lehman Tokyo’s IT Strategy

By the time I’d left First Interstate in 1987, the funding department at First Interstate had more PCs than we had people. When I arrived at Lehman’s Tokyo Investment Banking department, they had about 5 PCs in a sea of about 40 people. I explained to “Charles,” the British managing director running investment banking at the time, that I needed a machine to do my job. “Why?” he asked, “Those things are for secretaries.” I almost blew a gasket explaining to him what a small fraction of my total compensation had to be saved to break even on a PC. He finally gave in and got me one, although he tried to take it away later. I finally told him that if he took the machine away, I was quitting on the spot.

Supplementing Your Income as Only Senior Management Could Do

One day about 9 am, I had an imminent deal brewing and I needed to clear the final terms with Matsui. I went to his secretary, who’d been around since the Meiji era, and asked for 10 minutes of Matsui’s time. I could see him in the office, but she said “He’s busy all day.” I could see inside the office, and there was nobody there. I raised my eyebrows in a question and she smiled. “You can only see Matsui if you go to this hostess bar in the Ginza tonight. Your appointment is 9:15 pm.” I said, “You can’t be serious.” She blushed and explained that Matsui’s “friend” worked there.

I walked past Matsui’s office about 20 times that day, and most of the time his office was empty. Armed with the frustration of that knowledge, I showed up in the Ginza at 9:15 pm and found that the place was one of the largest and most elegant hostess bars I had ever seen. There were at least 50 girls working there, any one of whom could have been Miss Universe if they could afford to take a pay cut that big. There was a long line of Lehman people waiting, at least 10. I finally got to the head of the line and Matsui came up to me with a stunning Korean-Japanese girl would couldn’t have been more than 28 years old. “This is my friend,” he explained. “She’s the mama-san,” meaning the boss. We had our meeting, it took about 15 minutes, and at standard high end Ginza bubble hostess bar rates, that would have cost Lehman Tokyo about $1000.

The next day it all started to make sense to me. How does a 28 year old start a high end bar with a monthly salary expense of $1 million a month for 50 Miss Universes? By having a partner like Matsui who owned 99% of the place. If there were 10 of us from Lehman and the bar billed normally, that was $10,000 in one day and Matsui’s share was 99%. No one ever talked about it openly, not if you wanted to get a bonus anyway. So I couldn’t confirm it, but from the looks on people’s faces I was the last one at Lehman to find out.

Jimmy Three Sticks

James D. Robinson III, CEO of American Express, parent of Lehman, was on his way to Tokyo. Rumor had it that this was part of his campaign to be named Secretary of the Treasury, which involved pushing Jimmy Three Sticks’ (as he was known within Lehman) plan to solve the third world debt crisis. I was to take JDR III to all of the major banks that I covered to meet with their CEOs, along with the president of American Express Japan. The problem was that every one of those banks was very pissed at American Express because they had just announced that the Amex card could be used to access yen deposits in Nomura Securities’ new yen money market fund. One afternoon, the day before Jimmy III was to meet with the CEO of Kyowa Bank (later merged into what is now known as Resona Bank) a senior managing director named Shimizu-san called me directly. That was the current day equivalent of a direct call from the Pope. Senior managing directors only talked to Matsui, not to the likes of lowly senior vice presidents in investment banking. “Don-san,” he explained, “When Mr. Robinson comes tomorrow, we don’t want to talk about the Nomura money fund. We don’t want to hear anything. Nothing. Not a word. If he utters one sentence about it, Mr. Robinson is not going to like what happens.” Amazing. He wasn’t threatening me. He was threatening the CEO of American Express.

This was big time. I called the CEO at Amex Japan and couldn’t get him. I sent him an e-mail (primitive interoffice e-mail, as that’s all we had) and a fax telling him what had happened. He called me back and we went through it by phone. Then I called Shimizu and explained all that I had done. “Shimizu-san, in addition, I’ll explain this for the fifth time to Mr. Robinson in the car. Even though I do that, I have to warn you Mr. Robinson is going to do whatever he wants to do, and I want you to understand I have no control over that.” It was a good thing I explained that, because the next day, even after my explanation, Jimmy Three Sticks raised the Nomura fund. Shimizu barely managed to avoid a heart attack, and Jimmy Three Sticks was probably never closer to a fist fight in his professional career. I haven’t seen so much yelling in one meeting in my life. The Kyowa CEO was ready to kill Jimmy III. And that’s who was telling the Lehman CEO what to do.

Lehman and Credit Risk 1987-1990

Peter Cohen was the CEO at Lehman for the years I was there, with the infamous Dick Fuld and Chris Petit backing him up. Peter came to Tokyo a lot, along with Fuld and Lou Gerstner, later CEO at IBM, who was working as President of American Express at the time. Lots of other people whose names you know passed through too, because Lehman was still benefitting from the aura of the Golden Age of Pete Peterson, even though the commercial paper guys led by Lew Glucksman had taken over the firm.

Glucksman didn’t stick long but his attitude toward risk outlived him. Commercial paper traders under Glucksman kept no inventory at the end of the day, because that meant that either the firm had a bad sales effort or they were mispricing product. The same was true on the corporate bond side. One time I went to see Andy in fixed income and asked him how come I was having such a hard time getting good bond spread quotes from the fixed income desk in New York. Andy explained they were never allowed to own any corporate bonds over night. That’s right. Zero inventory. Much more conservative than my prior employers Security Pacific and First Interstate, but then again, they both nearly went under, avoiding credit-risk induced failure with mergers under duress.

So how did Lehman go from zero credit risk in the fixed income group in the late 1980s to $693 billion in assets on September 15, 2008? I don’t know. I wasn’t there.

Insurance from the Top

After I realized that I was surrounded by peers whiling away their time with embezzlement, expense report falsification, prostitution as a marketing strategy, and stock price manipulation, I went to my best friend, the guy M who had been ridiculed the night of my recruiting dinner. “How can this go on so long without New York doing anything,” I asked him. “You idiot. Don’t you understand anything? When those guys from New York come over, Matsui takes them to soap land too. He’s got the goods on them. They can’t touch him.” It was time to get out, and I quit in 1990 to start Kamakura. My standards were too high to stay at Lehman but I wasn’t sure if anyone else would understand why I quit. I had drinks with my best Japanese client shortly after. He was a deputy general manager at one of the most conservative and reputable banks in Tokyo. “It’s a good thing you quit,” he said. “It’s the best way to keep your personal reputation as good as it is.” His advice was worth taking, and he’s now the CEO of one of the four largest banks in Japan.

Epilogue

About six months after I had quit to form my own firm, another close friend, an Englishman we’ll call David, was fired from Lehman for no good reason. About the same time, a senior vice president of the investment banking department Kitamura had approached one of the best associates in investment banking, a girl we’ll call Tanaka. Right in the office, he pulled on her blouse so that he could see her breasts. She stormed into the head of investment banking Saito’s office, and demanded that this svp Kitamura-san be fired. Saito did nothing so Tanaka walked out, went home, and called the world wide head of the associates program at Lehman in New York, a female VP. She too did nothing. Tanaka and her peers logged a lot of calls into me and I promised to take action. Tanaka was a smart, tough girl who had made the Texas state swimming finals when she was in high school. Kitamura picked on the wrong girl. I wrote a letter to the former head of investment banking, the Englishman Charles. Charles had returned to New York. He was such a devout Christian that one of the Japanese women in his church was stalking him in New York. “Dear Charles,” my letter started, “I understand that David has been fired. Knowing how important religious values are to you, how can David be fired when these three guys are still on the payroll:

• Kitamura, who’s crudely sexually harassed Ms. Tanaka in the office in full view of the entire Tokyo investment banking department
• Gambino, who’s spent most of the last five years falsifying his expense reports rather than generating any business for the firm
• Ebuchi, who spends at least two hours a day sleeping at his desk in the investment banking department.”

I didn’t expect to hear anything back, and of course I didn’t. A few weeks later a friend in Lehman New York called and said “You’re letter’s getting widely circulated in New York.” “Oh yeah?” I said, “I bet I can guess what the reaction is.” “That’s right, I bet you can. They’re saying you’re psychologically disturbed,” he laughed. What happened to these guys?

• David is now a managing director at one of the three largest banks in the USA with very heavy responsibilities
• Kitamura was promoted to Managing Director at Lehman Tokyo
• Gambino was promoted to a senior position at Lehman New York but was finally fired after years of great call reports, inflated expense reports, and no revenue
• Ebuchi slept at Lehman for a few more years before moving to another firm
• Matsui finally left Lehman and was black-balled from other investment banking jobs after a head hunting firm finally did reasonable due diligence. He lived in Bangkok for many years after and died a year ago
• Tanaka has disappeared from sight. I don’t blame her.

Those are just a few of the PG-13 stories from that era. Maybe I was just lucky to have this window on Lehman. Maybe I’m just a blind man feeling the side of an elephant, unable to understand the true nature of the beast. Clearly the firm changed after I left. Thinking back, all I can say to the old Lehman is “Hasta la vista, baby.”

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10. Bonus CD: The One Minute Transformation–10 Ways to Turn Around Your Child’s Attitude in One Minute or Less

Retail: $327.00

Are you struggling with a child who is disrespectful, obnoxious or even abusive toward you? Are you frustrated and exhausted from arguing constantly? Do you “walk on eggshells” around your child, avoiding conflicts that will “set him off?” Have you tried screaming, punishing, pleading, and negotiating and your child still walks all over you?

All children behave badly from time to time. But when defiance, hostility and refusal to comply are ongoing, the behavior affects the entire family and requires more serious interventions. Fortunately, I’ve seen that when parents use the right tools, they can change their child’s problem behavior…quickly and dramatically.

A Lifetime of Experience with Child Behavior Problems

I have a very personal understanding of kids with behavior problems because I displayed severe oppositional, defiant behaviors as a child and teenager. For the past 30 years, I’ve been a behavioral therapist, focusing my work on helping behaviorally troubled children and teenagers turn around their behavior and take responsibility for their actions.

I know the frustration, fear, isolation and exhaustion you’re feeling as a parent because I’ve worked with hundreds of parents just like you. Parents of kids with behavior problems feel like they’re trapped in little prisons with no way out. No matter how hard they try, they can’t escape the endless arguments with and ceaseless hostility from their child.

No one knows a defiant child better than someone who behaved the same way as a kid. That’s why I can teach you how to turn your child’s behavior around now with The Total Transformation® Program.

They Say He “Needs Structure.” But How? I’ll Show You How

If you’re parenting a difficult child, you’ve heard this statement a thousand times: “This child needs structure.” But what does that “structure” look like and how do you put it in place in your home?

That’s where The Total Transformation® comes in. I’ll teach you simple, step-by-step techniques for giving your child the structure he needs to solve his problems and improve his behavior now. Here’s a look at some of the things you’ll learn:

How to stop any argument with your kid instantly
This is a powerful technique parents love because it pulls the plug on any argument with your child. You’ll be stunned at how quickly it works. Even if your teenage son is 6’2″ tall and you’re 5’4″.

The 10 words to say when he gets mouthy
The technique that stops back talk and cursing…no matter how nasty your child gets.

Stop the Show
The surefire way to stop fighting and acting out in public. If your child gets more defiant when he’s with his friends, this is a must-have tool.

Accountability
I’ll give you a word-by-word script to use with your child to get him to take responsibility for his own behavior and stop blaming you and others.

Consequences
How to give them, which ones work and which ones don’t, with specific consequences for kids in all age groups.

What To Do The Next Time
Instead of talking back, screaming or blaming you, your child will now have a way to solve his problems that gets him better results and better reactions from teachers and other adults.

About James Lehman:

For three decades James Lehman has worked with troubled teens, younger children with behavior problems, families and professionals who live with, educate, treat and assist in managing them. In public schools, residential treatment centers, private schools, and numerous outpatient and inpatient settings, James has developed an approach to managing children and adolescents which challenges them to learn to solve social problems without hiding behind a facade of disrespectful, obnoxious, or abusive behavior.

James Lehman brings a wealth of personal experience to the arena of child and adolescent therapy, and has good reason to focus on behavioral management, having experienced severe behavioral problems himself as a child and adolescent. Born in 1946, he was abandoned at age 2 by parents unable to take care of him. He was found by Mr. Teddy Lehman, who, with his wife Marguerite, went on to adopt him. James began to exhibit oppositional and defiant behavior at home and in the classroom. There was no such thing as special education then, and as he grew older these behaviors became more severe. Eventually he quit school, left home, lived on the streets in New York City, and drifted into a life of substance abuse and crime, which led to numerous prison sentences. After more than 6 years in various jails and prisons, James was given the opportunity to participate in an accountability focused treatment program.

James Lehman, MSW

Creator of The Total Transformation® Program

James Lehman graduated from that treatment program and participated in a period of training to become a staff coordinator – and his career as a counselor, therapist and teacher began. James attended Fordham University for 2 years, moved to New England, and obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work, graduating Summa Cum Laude. As he continued working with children, families and professionals, James was able to attend Boston University and, in 1989, graduated with a Master’s Degree in Social Work.

While working at a comprehensive residential treatment center, James began private practice, providing treatment, consultation and training to families, public schools and state agencies. The focus of that work was to provide parents, teachers and case managers with the tools they needed to successfully challenge difficult children to develop the problem solving and self management skills they needed to be successful without relying on disrespectful, obnoxious or abusive behavior.

Today, James Lehman provides training and consultation to schools, treatment centers and state agencies. He lives with his wife, Janet, who is also a social worker and has an adult son, Jeremy.

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If yelling worked, parenting would be easy, wouldn’t it? We’d simply scream, “Do it!” and our kids would listen and obey. But unfortunately, it doesn’t work.  I believe parents yell and scream because they’re angry and frustrated and have exhausted all other methods to get their kids to listen and behave.  So, they resort to power and dominance to get the job done. And that works—provided that their kids are

weaker than they are.  But if you yell a lot, your child will learn that yelling is acceptable and will quickly learn how to yell back.  And once that happens, you’re on the same level as your child, and your shouting will have no effect.

In my opinion, no parent should resort to yelling or shouting to get kids to listen.  It gives the child too much power.  It also doesn’t help you resolve the issue at hand, whether it’s getting your child to empty the dishwasher, stop watching TV, or come home on time. The other problem is that yelling turns you into your child’s emotional equal.  When you’re out of control, your authority is significantly diminished and your kids won’t listen to a word you say.

3 Reasons Why Yelling Won’t Make Your Kids Listen

1. Your child sees you lose control—and learns that by pushing the right buttons, he can make it happen.   Once you start using yelling as a behavioral management tool, you teach your child everything he needs to know about pushing your buttons and gaining power over you.

2. Your child learns the lesson that using power and dominance is how things get done in the world. And that by overpowering someone, he can get his way.

3. It makes your child shut down both mentally and emotionally.  As soon as the yelling starts, he quickly learns to stop listening. During an argument, kids will stop paying attention, reject what they’re hearing, or start yelling back. When people yell, usually they aren’t feeling anything but anger, agitation or frustration. And during a screaming match, certainly no one is doing much—if any—listening.

I think that one of the most important decisions parents can make is the decision to not yell—and then really work on it.   Believe me, the screaming matches in your home will die a natural death once you stop engaging in them.

This guest post is by James Lehman is a behavioral therapist and the creator of The Total Transformation Program for parents. He has worked with difficult children and teens for three decades. James holds a Masters Degree in Social Work from Boston University.

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