2,200 page "Coroner's Report" of Lehman Brothers Fails to mention Kasich

This morning Ted Strickland's communications director tweeted the following...


The article in question states:

“Unbeknownst to the investing public, rating agencies, government regulators, and Lehman’s board of directors, Lehman reverse engineered the firm’s net leverage ratio for public consumption,” Mr. Valukas wrote.

Mr. Fuld was “at least grossly negligent,” the report states, adding that Henry M. Paulson Jr., who was then the Treasury secretary, warned Mr. Fuld that Lehman might fail unless it stabilized its finances or found a buyer.

Obviously, it's Lis Smith's intention to connect John Kasich to these clear ethical lapses that took place at Lehman Bros.

And yet how many times is John Kasich mentioned in this 2,200 document? A document described by the NYT as Lehman's "coroner's report"? You'd imagine an obsessively detailed 2,200 page coroner's report covering everything that went wrong within Lehman would mention Kasich if he was a part of the problem, right?

So, how many times is Kasich mentioned in the report?

Zero.

Don't believe me? Look for yourself.

If anything, this report is the final nail in the coffin of whether Kasich was responsible for any wrongdoing while at Lehman Brothers. A report designed to detail over the course of 2,200 pages each and every ethical, moral, and legal lapse in judgement at Lehman didn't mention John Kasich once.

Interestingly enough, this part of the article sounds awfully familiar:

But the examiner, Anton R. Valukas, also for the first time, laid out what the report characterized as “materially misleading” accounting gimmicks that Lehman used to mask the perilous state of its finances. The bank’s bankruptcy, the largest in American history, shook the financial world. Fears that other banks might topple in a cascade of failures eventually led Washington to arrange a sweeping rescue for the nation’s financial system.

In a way, it sounds very similar to what we've come to learn about the Governor's own Administration. Kicking the can down the road. Budgetary irresponsibility that leads to requiring federal dollars to balance the state budget. Troopergate. Strickland, like Fuld, has been "at least grossly negligent".

Thanks, Lis. Now that Lehman has been put to rest, maybe we can focus on fixing Ohio.