Masters No More

If you have any doubts that the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the fire sale of Merrill Lynch, and the ongoing woes of AIG don't have global consequences, take a look at the international media. You'll quickly see that financial markets from London to Berlin to Tokyo are shuddering as the Dow lost 504 points yesterday. Most financial experts are saying it will get worse before it gets better.

What's already worse is the paucity of information about how this meltdown will affect the average hard working American. We told you yesterday it's likely thousands will be thrown out of work. Lehman Brothers alone has (or had) 25,000 employees worldwide, about 11,000 of them here in the US. However, a close reading of the foreign press tells you some will make out better than others, just as they have in the past.

The so-called "Masters of the Universe", the highest of the high flyers, never seem to actually get seriously hurt by these economic gyrations. As the newspaper The Scotsman puts it:" Masters of the Universe will never know what it's like to live in a subprime home". Richard Fuld, Lehman's boss of all bosses, certainly took a hit on the plummeting value of his company's stock. After all, he was Lehman's biggest shareholder. Yet he'll still walk away with eight figures.

And so it goes with any number of financial titans who leave as their firms struggle or go under. Those who were compensated largely in stock options saw the value of their paper evaporate, but they still had enough left over to keep both their homes and their memberships in fancy country clubs. And those fat bonuses many high flyers got when the markets seemed on a never ending roll? Nobody thinks about asking for them back.

And so, while millions of Americans worry about their 401Ks, the bigwigs who presided over this meltdown lick their wounds, knowing the little guy will never understand what it's like to be worth over a billion dollars one year, and only $60 million the next. The little guy just wants to know how it happened, and what anyone will do to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Right now, nobody's talking.