I’m currently reading this book:

Potted synopsis: it’s essentially a brilliantly written behind the scenes look at the events of 2008 surrounding the Financial Crisis, and specifically, the failure of Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers, the merger of Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, the AIG disaster. It is essentially a financial thriller (my god what a concept) but with real people.

Anyway, I’ve started to look into the Bazi’s of a number of the players, the dramatis personae if you like. It is an extremely long list (some of whom I checked up in 2008 itself) of individuals corporate captains, but also includes government officials like Henry Paulson, the last Treasury Secretary of the Bush presidency, Ben Bernanke, current Fed president (whose BaZi I looked at some time back and is due for a revisit), Warren Buffett (interesting insights into how his BaZi works from this book) and the current Treasury Secretary (then NY Fed Chairman) Tim Geithner.

Going to be my 2011 Magnum Opus post series I think. And those who are wondering I have not forgotten about How to Train Your Day Master series…

Anyway because the book provides such an in-depth look at Lehman Brothers in particular, it got me thinking about the extent in which the failure of a company (I mean, this is the spectacular failure of not just any company, but a listed company) is related to the BaZi of just the CEO, or does it necessarily entail the entire management essentially going through a crappy year all at once?

So far, an interesting pattern has emerged and that is that two of the key players in Lehman, the CEO Richard Fuld, and the CFO Erin Callan, were both Geng Metal Day Masters. And Henry Paulson, the former Goldman Sachs CEO who became Treasury Secretary, was a Xin Day Master. Coincidence? I am also curious to see what conclusions emerge about the profile of these Wall Street types, who from what I can see from the book, screwed up and then refused to take the time that comes with the crime. It will be interesting to see how many of them have charts that reveal abject greed as part of their personality, or risk-taking temperament that was out of control.

I’ll keep reading…and plotting BaZis. The pattern is going to be very interesting to say the least.