"Love Sucks," it declares. A red eyed teenage girl with a trickle of blood oozing out of the corner of her mouth leers Lolita-like at the surroundings. Creepy stuff.
Today they need posters to scare people. A year ago, Times Square provided its own real life horror show.
Standing square-jawed in its north-eastern corner is what once was the headquarters of Lehman Brothers, the 158-year-old firm that survived the American Civil War, two world wars, the Great Depression, the Cold War and 9/11 but not the sub-prime mortgage bubble which it helped to inflate.
Gambling the house
Looking up from the pavement, you have to squint into the flinty September sky to see the 31st floor where in spring 2008 Lehman's bosses, led by Richard Fuld, peddled billions of dollars worth of bundled sub-prime mortgages every month and made a mint from fees and commissions.
Apparently, the floor was an Aladdin's Cave of fine dining, Impressionist masterpieces and colossal greed, where the Masters of the Universe insulated themselves from the reality that was to bring them, their bank and the global financial system crashing down.
Lehman had gambled the house on the assumption, backed up by historical precedent, that in America property markets had never ever declined by more than 5%.
Until last year.
But then they had also never ever risen by 100% over just a few years, and they had never before thrived on the curious notion that all you needed to qualify for a mortgage was a pulse.
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