美丽的微笑与爱心的英语小短文(Beautiful Smile and Love)
作者介绍: 特蕾莎修女(Mother Teresa,1910-1997)，印度著名的慈善家，印度天主教仁爱传教会创始人，在世界范围内建立了一个庞大的慈善机构网，赢得了国际社会的广泛尊敬。1979年被授予诺贝尔和平奖。本文所选即好在领取该奖项时的演讲辞，这篇英语演讲小短文语言简洁质朴而感人至深。诺贝尔奖领奖台上响起的声音往往都是文采飞扬、热烈、激昂。而特雷莎修女的演说朴实无华，其所举事例听来似平凡之至，然而其中所蕴含的伟大而神圣的爱感人至深。平凡中孕育伟大，真情才能动人。我们作文时，要善于从自己所熟知的平凡中发掘伟大，以真情来打动读者。
The poor are very wonderful people. One evening we went out and we picked up four people from the street. And one of them was in a most terrible condition，and I told the sisters: You take care of the other three. I take care of this one who looked worse. So I did for her all that my love can do. I put her in bed, and there was such a beautiful smile on her face. She took hold of my hand as she said just the words
attention to myself. I would have said I am hungry, that I am dying, I am cold, I am in pain, or something, but she gave me much more-she gave me her grateful love. And she died with a smile on her face. As did that man whom we picked up from the drain[阴沟、下水道], half eaten with worms, and we brought him to the home.
angel-this is the greatness of our people. And that is why we believe what Jesus had said: I was hungry, I was naked, I was homeless, I was unwanted, unloved, uncared for, and you did it to me.
穷人是非常了不起的人。一天晚上，我们外出，从街上带回了四个人，其中一个生命岌岌可危。于是我告诉修女们说：“你们照料其他三个，这个濒危的人就由我来照顾了。”就这样，我为她做了我的爱所能做的一切。我将她放在床上，看到她的脸上绽露出如此美丽的微笑。她握着我的手，只说了句“谢谢您”就死了。我情不自禁地在她面前审视起自己的良知来。我问自己，如果我是她的话，会说些什么呢？答案很简单，我会尽量引起旁人对我的关注，我会说我饥饿难忍，冷得发抖，奄奄一息，痛苦不堪，诸如此类的话。但是她给我的却更多更多――她给了我她的感激之情。她死时脸上却带着微笑。我们从排水道带回的那个男子也是如此。当时，他几乎全身都快被虫子吃掉了，我们把他带回了家。“在街上，我一直像个动物一样地活着，但我将像个天使一样地死去，有人爱，有人关心。”真是太好了，我看到了他的伟大之处，他竟能说出那样的话。他那样地死去，不责怪任何人，不诅咒任何人，无欲无求。像天使一样――这便是我们的人民的伟大之所在。因此我们相信耶稣所说的话――我饥肠辘辘――我衣不蔽体――我无家可归――我不为人所要，不为人所爱，也不为人所关心――然而，你却为我做了这一切。
I believe that we are not real social workers. We may be doing social work in the eyes of the people, but we are really contemplatives[修行者、沉思冥想的人] in the heart of the world. For we are touching the body of Christ twenty-four hours…And I think that in our family we don't need bombs and guns, to destroy, to bring peace, just get together, love one another, bring that peace, that joy, that strength of presence of each other in the home. And we will be able to overcome all the evil that is in the world.
我想，我们算不上真正的社会工作者。在人们的眼中，或许我们是在做社会工作，但实际上，我们真的只是世界中心的修行者。因为，一天24小时，我们都在触摸基督的圣体。我想，在我们的大家庭时，我们不需要枪支和炮弹来破坏和平，或带来和平――我们只需要团结起来，彼此相爱，将和平、欢乐以及每一个家庭成员灵魂的活力都带回世界。这样，我们就能战胜世界上现存的一切邪恶。
And with this prize that I have received as a Prize of Peace, I am going to try to make the home for many people who have no home. Because I believe that love begins at home, and if we can create a home for the poor I think that more and more love will spread. And we will be able through this understanding love to bring peace be the good news to the poor. The poor in our own family first, in our country and in the world. To be able to do this, our Sisters, our lives have to be wove with prayer. They have to be woven with Christ to be able to understand, to be able to share. Because to be woven with Christ is to be able to understand, to be able to share. Because today there is so much suffering…When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread, I have satisfied. I have removed that hunger. But a person who is shut out, who feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person who has been thrown out from society-that poverty is so full of hurt and so unbearable…And so let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love, and once we begin to love each other naturally we want to do something.
我准备以我所获得的诺贝尔和平奖奖金为那些无家可归的人们建立自己的家园。因为我相信，爱源自家庭，如果我们能为穷人建立家园，我想爱便会传播得更广。而且，我们将通过这种宽容博大的爱而带来和平，成为穷人的福音。首先为我们自己家里的穷人，其次为我们国家，为全世界的穷人。为了做到这一点，姐妹们，我们的生活就必须与祷告紧紧相连，必须同基督结结一体才能互相体谅，共同分享，因为同基督结合一体就意味着互相体谅，共同分享。因为，今天的世界上仍有如此多的苦难存在……当我从街上带回一个饥肠辘辘的人时，给他一盘饭，一片面包，我就能使他心满意足了，我就能躯除他的饥饿。但是，如果一个人露宿街头，感到不为人所要，不为人所爱，惶恐不安，被社会抛弃――这样的贫困让人心痛，如此令人无法忍受。因此，让我们总是微笑想见，因为微笑就是爱的开端，一旦我们开始彼此自然地相爱，我们就会想着为对方做点什么了。
We want to thank all the people here for taking time out of your busy schedule at the busiest time of the year to come to our year-end party.
Tonight we are very fortunate to have our friends from Johnson Company with us here to celebrate the year-end festivities together.
We all hope you will be able to have a good time tasting the Chinese cuisine, drinking the Chinese wine, and, above all, enjoying the Chinese 'authentic' entertainment. Our young talented employees are going to perform.
Now, let us propose a toast to this happy occasion at the end of the year. (After all the cups glasses has been filled.)
Here's to Johnson's and Good Electric!
邀请外商客户参加年终餐会，使其见识中国人的[饮食文化]，这主意也是不错的。席间对于贵宾百忙之中抽空光临表示感谢之意，并且在请其品尝美酒佳肴欣赏余兴节目之际，带头举杯预祝双方今后的合作愉快。
Who pays for the U.S. deficit?
We know the fact is of a $438,000,000 deficit this year and the rest is sort of
speculative ,but but can you see the US getting into a trillion dollar market and if so, how?
Well, we're, we're obviously heading into a very difficult time for the US
economically. You are gonna see a drop in tax receipts, you are gonna see, uh, pressure on the government to use money that's already been used to bail out Wall Street to help other, other constituencies in the US who're also gonna be facing troubles. So if possible that we could see these numbers in fact.Get to those sort of level.
I mean is the US of the opinion like most of the rest of the world, the best way to tackle a recession now is to spend very freely, the so called Keynesian Economic Theory.
I think they are gonna have their hands tied, I mean you can spend a certain
amount but on the other hand, already we've got a massive budget deficit, we've got a huge amount of money that the US owes the rest of the world. So they can only go so far in trying to spend their way out of this recession.
Ok. So as you point out, the US already owes the rest of the world a huge amount of money. There's a ten-trillion-dollar national debt. Perhaps up to a trillion dollars coming up. The government will finance that by selling basically treasuries to other countries. Why should those other countries buy them?
Well, of course, the US is gonna be turning to the same usual suspects who have been buying US debt in the past. That's gonna be China, Japan, investors in the Middle East. And the problem for them is that they are already on the hook for a lot of US debt they have purchased in the past. And so they face, what some people have called “the financial balance of terror”. If you decide that you are not gonna buy, US debt going forward , you risk shooting yourself in the foot by devaluing the securities that you already own. So in a sense you need to keep buying in order to keep your portfolio valuable for the future. On the other hand, the question may be at what price, what yield does the US government have to offer in order to attract these investors to continue financing the US deficit.
Do you think there is a growing concern though in the international community , a government level, that after they've heard the president say I will half the national
debt by the time I leave office and in fact it's going completely the other way. It's now a record deficit and ballooning, that the rest of the world loses their faith in the US government's ability to manage its own finances. So therefore they are gonna be saying we don't wanna go near this.
Sure there is a, there is a real question of confidence that the government is gonna be facing, the new administration is gonna be facing when it comes into office and that will be a matter for the administration to address in terms of trying to bolster the confidence of investors, and in fact you have a new attitude, you have a
resolution to try and address this. Nobody expects that the deficit is gonna to be balanced or addressed short-term because of the recession, but longer term, if people see and or at least have faith that the US is taking the right steps to address this longer term then that may that may do something to address some of these concerns.
You talk about that sort of balance of year, that balance of fear, that if they stop buying , in fear if the value of the US dollar will come down. But all the same
countries like China and Japan have the bulk of their overseas foreign reserves in these US treasuries, 90% maybe, maybe a bit less. But isn't there a move to bounce up, why don't they buy euros, why don't they buy yen, why do they keep wanting to buy the US dollar if there are so many problems associated with US dollar.
There have been discussions about this in the past and every once in a while you see a comment that suggests that China or Japan might be looking to diversify their exposure and up their buying of euros or other currencies, and I doubt that you will see that go away. However on the other hand, what you've seen now with the
financial crisis reaching Europe and the problems there and the need for
governments to go in and bail out the banking system there with Europe now in a recession and possibly getting into a very serious one in the next year. What that says is that Europe may not necessarily be as much of a safer bet than the dollar CEO Apple beyond Steve Jobs
Apple is undoubtedly one of the most secretive company in the American, may be even in the world. And there are two secrets that people really want to know the answer to about Apple right now.
One is what is the status of Steve job's health. He had a treatable form of pancreatic cancer four years ago. He says he is got it beaten, but he isn't giving any more details. And he looks thin and gone, and that's got people concerned about his health.
The second secret people want to know the answer too is who would replace Steve Jobs. If he were to step down as CEO. The most logistical candidate is the chief operating officer of Apple, an executive named Tim Cook. Not a lot is known about him, he is 48 years old. He is an operation's expert. He spent many years at IBM, and He makes the trends run on time at Apple. He is health and fittness enough.He loves the cycle and hike and he is a big fan of Auburn football where he went to school.
But it's not a foregone conclusion that Cook would succeed Jobs. There are other prominent Apple executives who people talk about including Jonathan Cohn, the head of design, Ryan Janson the head of Apple retail stores. And Peter Oppenhemier
the company's chief financial officer. None of those candidates however has the same combination of technical engineering chops and business acumen that Cook has.
Of course it's also possible the Apple board could go outside and get somebody completely outside of Apple,but remember before Steven Jobs came back to Apple in 1997,the board had gone to an outsider, that didn't work out so well.
Lehman's CEO to testify
We are learning more now about the breaking news story we told you just a few moments ago that Lehman Brothers' former CEO has been called to testify about the investment bank's spectacular collapse last, last month. Let's go now to
correspondent Ali Velshi in New York for more details on this. So Ali, what have you been able to learn about this.
Ralitsa, this is a major development in the effort to understand how the US financial system suddenly spiraled out of control, starting on September 15th with the
collapse of Lehman Brothers. That was the biggest bankruptcy filing in US history. Now we have learnt the source directly involved with, the bankruptcy filing has conformed to CNN that the former CEO, the CEO in place at the time of the
bankruptcy Dick Fuld is one of the people who has been called to testify in the Grand Jury, that is part of three, perhaps, three investigations going on, two in New York, and one in the State of New Jersey. But federal investigations into what led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
Now this is an interesting development because prior to the Enron and WorldCom scandals, there, it wasn't necessary a federal offense to materially mislead investors but the the Sarbanes-Oxley bill made that a material offense. So that meant that financial statement had to be signed up by the CFO and the CEO of the company and they had to attest to the fact that they knew what was in them and that they knew that information to be true.
Well just days before the collapse of Lehman Brothers on Sept. 10th. There was a conference call with the company's executives and analysts and investors and the investigations may be centering on whether the information that was disseminated at that point was accurate; whether anybody knew anything else; whether the executives of the company or those who had been subpoenaed had other
information. Now we don't the details of the investigations or the grand jury, but the grand jury in the United States is called to investigate whether federal crimes were committed in a particular instance. And that is what we understand DickFuld has been subpoenaed to testify at.
Yeah. That's could possibly be huge. Ali, let's look at the other side of the story. Uh, when he was testifing in front of Congress, he pointed the finger at the
government's inaction. He said that had caused it.
Yeah, look, this is what..this is going to be seen as the turning point in this economic crisis. Until then we knew the United States was in a recession; we knew that the investment banks were having the trouble raising money and the federal
government has stepped in a number of cases including that of Bear Stearns, try to guarantee a purchase, or guarantee the finance of these companies. Then the
federal government went into that weekend meeting prior to Sept. 15th would be understanding that they were going to try and find a buyer for Lehman Brothers and they emerged. You may recall with Bank of America, which is one of the potential buyers, ending up buying Merrill Lynch but nobody buying / Lehman Brothers. And the collapse of Lehman Brothers led us to this credit freeze because we realize that somebody's companies are of no value, or will have no value even to the lowest bidder.
So we have to understand what happened there. Was there information the public didn't know? Uh, it seems very strange that they pointed the finger at the
government. But what we do know is regulatory oversight in the United States did seem to not be in order. We have more than a dozen regulatory agencies dealing with financial institutions in the United States. I like in that we are at least having a regulatory system like a highway system that was built for cars that go 25 miles an hour when all your cars can go 100 miles an hour. There's definitely something to be said for government oversight, but I think this investigation's gonna look very specifically what executives of Lehman knew and what they told the investors.
美丽的微笑与爱心的英语小短文(Beautiful Smile and Love)
作者介绍: 特蕾莎修女(Mother Teresa,1910-1997)，印度著名的慈善家，印度天主教仁爱传教会创始人，在世界范围内建立了一个庞大的慈善机构网，赢得了国际社会的广泛尊敬。1979年被授予诺贝尔和平奖。本文所选即好在领取该奖项时的演讲辞，这篇英语演讲小短文语言简洁质朴而感人至深。诺贝尔奖领奖台上响起的声音往往都是文采飞扬、热烈、激昂。而特雷莎修女的演说朴实无华，其所举事例听来似平凡之至，然而其中所蕴含的伟大而神圣的爱感人至深。平凡中孕育伟大，真情才能动人。我们作文时，要善于从自己所熟知的平凡中发掘伟大，以真情来打动读者。
The poor are very wonderful people. One evening we went out and we picked up four people from the street. And one of them was in a most terrible condition，and I told the sisters: You take care of the other three. I take care of this one who looked worse. So I did for her all that my love can do. I put her in bed, and there was such a beautiful smile on her face. She took hold of my hand as she said just the words
attention to myself. I would have said I am hungry, that I am dying, I am cold, I am in pain, or something, but she gave me much more-she gave me her grateful love. And she died with a smile on her face. As did that man whom we picked up from the drain[阴沟、下水道], half eaten with worms, and we brought him to the home.
angel-this is the greatness of our people. And that is why we believe what Jesus had said: I was hungry, I was naked, I was homeless, I was unwanted, unloved, uncared for, and you did it to me.
穷人是非常了不起的人。一天晚上，我们外出，从街上带回了四个人，其中一个生命岌岌可危。于是我告诉修女们说：“你们照料其他三个，这个濒危的人就由我来照顾了。”就这样，我为她做了我的爱所能做的一切。我将她放在床上，看到她的脸上绽露出如此美丽的微笑。她握着我的手，只说了句“谢谢您”就死了。我情不自禁地在她面前审视起自己的良知来。我问自己，如果我是她的话，会说些什么呢？答案很简单，我会尽量引起旁人对我的关注，我会说我饥饿难忍，冷得发抖，奄奄一息，痛苦不堪，诸如此类的话。但是她给我的却更多更多――她给了我她的感激之情。她死时脸上却带着微笑。我们从排水道带回的那个男子也是如此。当时，他几乎全身都快被虫子吃掉了，我们把他带回了家。“在街上，我一直像个动物一样地活着，但我将像个天使一样地死去，有人爱，有人关心。”真是太好了，我看到了他的伟大之处，他竟能说出那样的话。他那样地死去，不责怪任何人，不诅咒任何人，无欲无求。像天使一样――这便是我们的人民的伟大之所在。因此我们相信耶稣所说的话――我饥肠辘辘――我衣不蔽体――我无家可归――我不为人所要，不为人所爱，也不为人所关心――然而，你却为我做了这一切。
I believe that we are not real social workers. We may be doing social work in the eyes of the people, but we are really contemplatives[修行者、沉思冥想的人] in the heart of the world. For we are touching the body of Christ twenty-four hours…And I think that in our family we don't need bombs and guns, to destroy, to bring peace, just get together, love one another, bring that peace, that joy, that strength of presence of each other in the home. And we will be able to overcome all the evil that is in the world.
我想，我们算不上真正的社会工作者。在人们的眼中，或许我们是在做社会工作，但实际上，我们真的只是世界中心的修行者。因为，一天24小时，我们都在触摸基督的圣体。我想，在我们的大家庭时，我们不需要枪支和炮弹来破坏和平，或带来和平――我们只需要团结起来，彼此相爱，将和平、欢乐以及每一个家庭成员灵魂的活力都带回世界。这样，我们就能战胜世界上现存的一切邪恶。
And with this prize that I have received as a Prize of Peace, I am going to try to make the home for many people who have no home. Because I believe that love begins at home, and if we can create a home for the poor I think that more and more love will spread. And we will be able through this understanding love to bring peace be the good news to the poor. The poor in our own family first, in our country and in the world. To be able to do this, our Sisters, our lives have to be wove with prayer. They have to be woven with Christ to be able to understand, to be able to share. Because to be woven with Christ is to be able to understand, to be able to share. Because today there is so much suffering…When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread, I have satisfied. I have removed that hunger. But a person who is shut out, who feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person who has been thrown out from society-that poverty is so full of hurt and so unbearable…And so let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love, and once we begin to love each other naturally we want to do something.
我准备以我所获得的诺贝尔和平奖奖金为那些无家可归的人们建立自己的家园。因为我相信，爱源自家庭，如果我们能为穷人建立家园，我想爱便会传播得更广。而且，我们将通过这种宽容博大的爱而带来和平，成为穷人的福音。首先为我们自己家里的穷人，其次为我们国家，为全世界的穷人。为了做到这一点，姐妹们，我们的生活就必须与祷告紧紧相连，必须同基督结结一体才能互相体谅，共同分享，因为同基督结合一体就意味着互相体谅，共同分享。因为，今天的世界上仍有如此多的苦难存在……当我从街上带回一个饥肠辘辘的人时，给他一盘饭，一片面包，我就能使他心满意足了，我就能躯除他的饥饿。但是，如果一个人露宿街头，感到不为人所要，不为人所爱，惶恐不安，被社会抛弃――这样的贫困让人心痛，如此令人无法忍受。因此，让我们总是微笑想见，因为微笑就是爱的开端，一旦我们开始彼此自然地相爱，我们就会想着为对方做点什么了。
We want to thank all the people here for taking time out of your busy schedule at the busiest time of the year to come to our year-end party.
Tonight we are very fortunate to have our friends from Johnson Company with us here to celebrate the year-end festivities together.
We all hope you will be able to have a good time tasting the Chinese cuisine, drinking the Chinese wine, and, above all, enjoying the Chinese 'authentic' entertainment. Our young talented employees are going to perform.
Now, let us propose a toast to this happy occasion at the end of the year. (After all the cups glasses has been filled.)
Here's to Johnson's and Good Electric!
邀请外商客户参加年终餐会，使其见识中国人的[饮食文化]，这主意也是不错的。席间对于贵宾百忙之中抽空光临表示感谢之意，并且在请其品尝美酒佳肴欣赏余兴节目之际，带头举杯预祝双方今后的合作愉快。
Who pays for the U.S. deficit?
We know the fact is of a $438,000,000 deficit this year and the rest is sort of
speculative ,but but can you see the US getting into a trillion dollar market and if so, how?
Well, we're, we're obviously heading into a very difficult time for the US
economically. You are gonna see a drop in tax receipts, you are gonna see, uh, pressure on the government to use money that's already been used to bail out Wall Street to help other, other constituencies in the US who're also gonna be facing troubles. So if possible that we could see these numbers in fact.Get to those sort of level.
I mean is the US of the opinion like most of the rest of the world, the best way to tackle a recession now is to spend very freely, the so called Keynesian Economic Theory.
I think they are gonna have their hands tied, I mean you can spend a certain
amount but on the other hand, already we've got a massive budget deficit, we've got a huge amount of money that the US owes the rest of the world. So they can only go so far in trying to spend their way out of this recession.
Ok. So as you point out, the US already owes the rest of the world a huge amount of money. There's a ten-trillion-dollar national debt. Perhaps up to a trillion dollars coming up. The government will finance that by selling basically treasuries to other countries. Why should those other countries buy them?
Well, of course, the US is gonna be turning to the same usual suspects who have been buying US debt in the past. That's gonna be China, Japan, investors in the Middle East. And the problem for them is that they are already on the hook for a lot of US debt they have purchased in the past. And so they face, what some people have called “the financial balance of terror”. If you decide that you are not gonna buy, US debt going forward , you risk shooting yourself in the foot by devaluing the securities that you already own. So in a sense you need to keep buying in order to keep your portfolio valuable for the future. On the other hand, the question may be at what price, what yield does the US government have to offer in order to attract these investors to continue financing the US deficit.
Do you think there is a growing concern though in the international community , a government level, that after they've heard the president say I will half the national
debt by the time I leave office and in fact it's going completely the other way. It's now a record deficit and ballooning, that the rest of the world loses their faith in the US government's ability to manage its own finances. So therefore they are gonna be saying we don't wanna go near this.
Sure there is a, there is a real question of confidence that the government is gonna be facing, the new administration is gonna be facing when it comes into office and that will be a matter for the administration to address in terms of trying to bolster the confidence of investors, and in fact you have a new attitude, you have a
resolution to try and address this. Nobody expects that the deficit is gonna to be balanced or addressed short-term because of the recession, but longer term, if people see and or at least have faith that the US is taking the right steps to address this longer term then that may that may do something to address some of these concerns.
You talk about that sort of balance of year, that balance of fear, that if they stop buying , in fear if the value of the US dollar will come down. But all the same
countries like China and Japan have the bulk of their overseas foreign reserves in these US treasuries, 90% maybe, maybe a bit less. But isn't there a move to bounce up, why don't they buy euros, why don't they buy yen, why do they keep wanting to buy the US dollar if there are so many problems associated with US dollar.
There have been discussions about this in the past and every once in a while you see a comment that suggests that China or Japan might be looking to diversify their exposure and up their buying of euros or other currencies, and I doubt that you will see that go away. However on the other hand, what you've seen now with the
financial crisis reaching Europe and the problems there and the need for
governments to go in and bail out the banking system there with Europe now in a recession and possibly getting into a very serious one in the next year. What that says is that Europe may not necessarily be as much of a safer bet than the dollar CEO Apple beyond Steve Jobs
Apple is undoubtedly one of the most secretive company in the American, may be even in the world. And there are two secrets that people really want to know the answer to about Apple right now.
One is what is the status of Steve job's health. He had a treatable form of pancreatic cancer four years ago. He says he is got it beaten, but he isn't giving any more details. And he looks thin and gone, and that's got people concerned about his health.
The second secret people want to know the answer too is who would replace Steve Jobs. If he were to step down as CEO. The most logistical candidate is the chief operating officer of Apple, an executive named Tim Cook. Not a lot is known about him, he is 48 years old. He is an operation's expert. He spent many years at IBM, and He makes the trends run on time at Apple. He is health and fittness enough.He loves the cycle and hike and he is a big fan of Auburn football where he went to school.
But it's not a foregone conclusion that Cook would succeed Jobs. There are other prominent Apple executives who people talk about including Jonathan Cohn, the head of design, Ryan Janson the head of Apple retail stores. And Peter Oppenhemier
the company's chief financial officer. None of those candidates however has the same combination of technical engineering chops and business acumen that Cook has.
Of course it's also possible the Apple board could go outside and get somebody completely outside of Apple,but remember before Steven Jobs came back to Apple in 1997,the board had gone to an outsider, that didn't work out so well.
Lehman's CEO to testify
We are learning more now about the breaking news story we told you just a few moments ago that Lehman Brothers' former CEO has been called to testify about the investment bank's spectacular collapse last, last month. Let's go now to
correspondent Ali Velshi in New York for more details on this. So Ali, what have you been able to learn about this.
Ralitsa, this is a major development in the effort to understand how the US financial system suddenly spiraled out of control, starting on September 15th with the
collapse of Lehman Brothers. That was the biggest bankruptcy filing in US history. Now we have learnt the source directly involved with, the bankruptcy filing has conformed to CNN that the former CEO, the CEO in place at the time of the
bankruptcy Dick Fuld is one of the people who has been called to testify in the Grand Jury, that is part of three, perhaps, three investigations going on, two in New York, and one in the State of New Jersey. But federal investigations into what led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
Now this is an interesting development because prior to the Enron and WorldCom scandals, there, it wasn't necessary a federal offense to materially mislead investors but the the Sarbanes-Oxley bill made that a material offense. So that meant that financial statement had to be signed up by the CFO and the CEO of the company and they had to attest to the fact that they knew what was in them and that they knew that information to be true.
Well just days before the collapse of Lehman Brothers on Sept. 10th. There was a conference call with the company's executives and analysts and investors and the investigations may be centering on whether the information that was disseminated at that point was accurate; whether anybody knew anything else; whether the executives of the company or those who had been subpoenaed had other
information. Now we don't the details of the investigations or the grand jury, but the grand jury in the United States is called to investigate whether federal crimes were committed in a particular instance. And that is what we understand DickFuld has been subpoenaed to testify at.
Yeah. That's could possibly be huge. Ali, let's look at the other side of the story. Uh, when he was testifing in front of Congress, he pointed the finger at the
government's inaction. He said that had caused it.
Yeah, look, this is what..this is going to be seen as the turning point in this economic crisis. Until then we knew the United States was in a recession; we knew that the investment banks were having the trouble raising money and the federal
government has stepped in a number of cases including that of Bear Stearns, try to guarantee a purchase, or guarantee the finance of these companies. Then the
federal government went into that weekend meeting prior to Sept. 15th would be understanding that they were going to try and find a buyer for Lehman Brothers and they emerged. You may recall with Bank of America, which is one of the potential buyers, ending up buying Merrill Lynch but nobody buying / Lehman Brothers. And the collapse of Lehman Brothers led us to this credit freeze because we realize that somebody's companies are of no value, or will have no value even to the lowest bidder.
So we have to understand what happened there. Was there information the public didn't know? Uh, it seems very strange that they pointed the finger at the
government. But what we do know is regulatory oversight in the United States did seem to not be in order. We have more than a dozen regulatory agencies dealing with financial institutions in the United States. I like in that we are at least having a regulatory system like a highway system that was built for cars that go 25 miles an hour when all your cars can go 100 miles an hour. There's definitely something to be said for government oversight, but I think this investigation's gonna look very specifically what executives of Lehman knew and what they told the investors.