Jared Dillian went from the Coast Guard to high finance, only to crack up as the global economy did the same—and he was inside the biggest ticking time bomb of all,
Lehman Brothers.His thoughts, at the time, are a chilling look at what the melt down did the to the people closest to it. Luckily for us, he wrote them all down and published them.We've collected some of the most vivid scenes from
his book, 'Street Freak: Money and Madness at Lehman Brothers.'Check out our highlights and then pick up your own copy; it's a great read.Dillan realized that the market is "an angry God.""The market has its own intelligence. It has a sort of malignant omniscience that dictates that the market will do whatever fucks over the most people at any given time. It knows your positions, and it knows your fears. You are a sinner in the hands of an angry God, and your positions are going to pay."Source: 'Street Freak'Especially when he found out that its "leveraged loan book was big and toxic." "What I didn't know was that the mortgage desk had risk several orders of magnitude larger. I didn't know that the leveraged loan book was big and toxic. I didn't know that Lehman's real estate portfolio was absolutely pornographic. There were assholes on every floor in the building who'd built up massive Captain Jack positions that they were unable to liquidate, and they were pissing money into the street. Our leaders were completely ignorant of the last eighty years of financial history, seemingly unaware of the fact that markets go through cycles of boom and bust, and that twenty-five years of credit expansion had led the financial markets to the edge of disaster."Source: 'Street Freak'That's when he lost it because he was unable to prevent Lehman's heavy losses."I snapped. I grabbed a tape dispenser, lifted it high above my head, and slammed it into the desk with all my might. [....] The tape dispenser had been filled with sand for weight. There was sand all over my suit, in my hair, on my glasses, my keyboard, my turret, and everywhere else. There was also a pool of blood forming on the desk, mixed in with the sand, where the serrated edge of the tape dispenser had nearly sliced off my pinky finger. I was standing there, trembling with rage, covered in blood and sand, all over having failed to prevent an $80,000 loss."Source: 'Street Freak'See the rest of the story at Business InsiderPlease follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.See Also:9 Stomach Ache Inducing Thanksgiving Eating Contests Just For Wall StreetCheck Out These Gorgeous Antique Photos Of Wall Street And The NYSECheck Out Hand Signals Traders In The Pits Of The NYMEX UsePresented By:Win New Customers Ads by Pheedo
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