by Calculated Risk on 7/08/2008 01:17:00 AM

From Andrew Sorkin at the NY Times: Psst! Hear the Rumor of the Day?

“I will hurt the shorts, and that is my goal,” [Lehman CEO] Richard S. Fuld Jr. fumed.

Hey, every time I hear a CEO complain about the "shorts", I think the CEO must have better things to do!

Talk that Barclays was buying even reached Lehman’s trading desks, where the rumor whipped around the office and then reverberated across Wall Street again. Panicky Lehman employees started calling friends outside the firm to find out what was going on inside the firm. One Lehman executive said, “Even my mother-in-law called me.”
...
Absurd rumors can have legs, like the Lehman-Barclays one, which Richard Bove, an analyst at Ladenburg Thalmann, said “ranks up there with the moon is made out of green cheese in terms of its validity.”

I hear rumors frequently; some make sense, some don't. I had a similar reaction as Bove to the Lehman-Barclays rumor.

Today we had rumors circulating about Indymac that proved to be true. I only posted the rumor because of the importance to housing and the credit markets, the stock was halted pending news (although apparently not halted everywhere - weird) and the rumor seemed likely to be true (it was).

As an aside, I met Sorkin at the Milken conference. I thought he was still in high school (just kidding), but I did feel a little old.