“Do you want to punch Dick Fuld in the nose?”

In the wake of today’s column, I did an interview this morning on WNYC, and that was the question the host, Brian Lehrer, was asking his listeners. I can certainly understand the feeling. Yesterday, during his testimony before Henry Waxman’s House Committee on J’Accuse (O.K., O.K.: the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform), Mr. Fuld came across as a cold, arrogant man who was playing that classic American tune, “I’m a Victim Too.” It wasn’t pretty. When he tried to play down the enormous sums he has put in his pocket these past years, he sounded out of touch with the pain that Lehman’s bankruptcy has caused thousands of employees and shareholders.

I also couldn’t help thinking back to Jeff Skilling’s testimony before Mr. Waxman six years ago, after the Enron scandal unfolded. Mr. Fuld was less combative than Mr. Skilling, but the impulse to place the blame on rumor-mongering short-sellers was the same, as was the unwillingness to acknowledge mistakes. Also, like Mr. Skilling, Mr. Fuld has become the most recognizable villain to most Americans — hence Mr. Lehrer’s question — and prosecutors are surely going to be digging around Lehman’s collapse, looking for criminal acts, just as they did after Enron. It doesn’t help Mr. Fuld that his firm was clearly telling the markets that everything was fine when it clearly wasn’t. As you may recall, that is one of the reasons Mr. Skilling ended where he is now — behind bars.



But let’s be honest here. Every firm on Wall Street — and every C.E.O. — did the same things that Mr. Fuld did, and rewarded themselves every bit as handsomely. Stan O’Neal at Merrill Lynch made the exact same set of mistakes — diving into the subprime derivative market with both feet. All the firms gamed the ratings agencies to get Triple-A ratings for their toxic junk. They all pushed for higher debt ratios.

(There is a lovely memo floating around the Internet, written by Henry Paulson when he was chief executive of Goldman Sachs, in which he says that Goldman’s chief regulatory priority is to get the S.E.C. to loosen up debt ratios for the big investment banks.)

If Lehman had managed to sell itself to Bank of America — and Merrill had gone bankrupt instead — it would be Mr. O’Neal who would now be playing the role of Henry Waxman’s punching bag.

I’m not saying that the urge to punch Dick Fuld in the nose isn’t a powerful one. I am saying that it is a little misplaced. The best efforts of everyone — including Mr. Waxman — should be geared toward solving the crisis, better understanding why it happened, and making sure it can never happen again. Then we can turn our attention to the likes of Dick Fuld.