John Lanchester:

The general public's first sustained look at Richard Fuld came when he testified to Congress in the aftermath of his bank's destruction. His strange and strong affect was immediately apparent: a man who gave the impression of having to fight very hard, at all times, to rein in a powerful feeling of anger. He looked angry on the way in, he looked angry on the way out, he looked angry when he was offering a non-apology for what had happened, and he looked angry when Congressman Henry Waxman was asking him if it was true he had taken $480 million in compensation out of the collapsed company in the years since 2000. To many viewers, Fuld also looked like what Wall Street would look like if it allowed its mask to slip: arrogant, furious at criticism and perceived slights, and so far gone in its own sense of embattled entitlement that it seemed to have lost touch with reality.

Cory Doctorow:

The real reason to wear the mask is to spare others the discomfort of seeing your facial expression ...

Richard Fuld, on short sellers:

I want to reach in, rip out their heart and eat it before they die.

A banker:

Revolutionize your heart out. We'll still have this country by the balls.

Lanchester:

The official rules of the market are different from what actually happens.

You can tell a man is serious when he uses the most threatening, the most gravitas-laden word in the modern lexicon: 'appropriate'.

Judith Hertog:

I love the word "rectify" when I'm angry. It's so proper and so obscene at the same time!

Lanchester:

For the free-marketers, the idea of endless bail-outs was just so obscene that the temptation to walk the walk of market discipline would somewhere, sometime, have proved too great to resist. Lehman did not create the reality of Too Big to Fail, it merely exposed it to general view. There was a brief moment when the general horror at the new state of affairs seemed likely to lead to change; but as stock markets and liquidity have recovered, that moment is receding, and we seem to be settling back into the status quo ante, with a few cosmetic changes about bonuses. We the paying public can't do anything much except admit defeat and settle back for the next set of bills.

The Shoveller:

We struck down evil with the mighty sword of teamwork and the hammer of not bickering.