Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Looking for Answers

Yesterday, the House Financial Services Committee had a hearing regarding the collapse of Lehman Brothers. With the Dispatch reporting that Ohio's pension funds lost $480 million in investments at Lehman Brothers, Ohioans are very interested in what happened to the once Wall Street giant.

As an interested person (I have my retirement in one of the Ohio pension plans), I have a few questions I'd like answered:

(1) Since these Ohio pension plans had such big money in Lehman Brothers and John Kasich worked at Lehman, is it possible that Kasich could have had a hand in selling some of these investments to the pension managers?

(2) Could Kasich have used his familiarity with Ohio's pension plans to get involved in the selling of the investments?

(3) Who were the contacts that the Ohio pension plans used in handling their accounts? Were the contacts directly or indirectly connected to John Kasich?

(4) While he worked at Lehman Brothers, was Kasich aware of or a participant in the Repo 105 transactions?

Of course, I don't think that Kasich will answer any of these questions because he avoids providing any complete answers to any inquiries (examples: a. his plan to cut state income tax, b. his planned cuts,
c. his real job at Lehman's, d. his complete salary history at Lehman's and Barclays). A lot of Ohioans with money in the public pension plans want some answers.