A REPORT ON FINDING THE BEANS.

A REPORT ON FINDING THE BEANS. I posted here in December 2008 on the fact that, to my astonishment, over two months after the Lehman bankruptcy, the administrators of the European operations were still trying to find out what Lehman owned. Jennifer Hughes in the Financial Times reported on July 15 that the administrators will finally be filing a plan in court to deal with the trapped assets of Lehman customers. Lehman Europe had held over $30 billion of assets belonging to over 1000 clients. If the plan is approved, the customers will begin getting their assets back early next year. The plan “only applies to Lehman clients with assets trapped in the dead bank, not to other creditors.” As for the other creditors, Jennifer Hughes reported last week that: “Lehman’s tangled connections are yet to be unravelled. Administrators are still figuring out whether its counterparties are net debtors or creditors.” There are tens of thousands of counterparties. This is what I mean when I say that in addition to the concept of “too big to fail”, there should also be the concept of “too complex to fail.”