Rebuilding lives, 10 years after the fall of Lehman

LONDON (Reuters) – This image has become the symbol of the global financial crisis – a score of bankers turned their backs to the window to attend an emergency meeting at the London office of Lehman Brothers while the news came out. business was breaking down.

Gwion Moore, one of those pictured in Reuters' photograph taken on Sept. 11, 2008, recalled that the growing sense of panic in the financial markets contrasted with the prevailing mood that prevailed at the time in building.

"It was almost a festival atmosphere at the bank. We did not do anything. But people always came to work and talked to each other, "said Moore.

The picture was taken when he and his boss told him things were going to be fine despite the collapse of the Lehman Brothers share price.

"Senior management thought it needed to focus on the workforce again," Moore said. "The stop was to stop doing silly things and get back to work." I do not think anyone took the message very seriously because we went back to what we did before. No one was going to trade with us.

In four days, the US government has chosen not to save the bank, intensifying the already widespread chaos in the markets, putting the financial system on its knees and tipping the global economy into a deep recession.

Moore's department – European Fixed Income – was not part of Lehman Brothers shares that were sold to other banks. Two weeks after the collapse of the company, his security card stopped working and was fired.

Moore spent six months unemployed before finding a job as a fund manager. He is now working in his native Australia.

UNEMPLOYMENT

The crisis also shook the life of Eric Lipps, a US public sector employee, who appeared in another well-known Reuters photograph.

In late 2009, he was photographed in a long list of people looking to meet potential employers at an employment show in New York.

At that time, the US unemployment rate had reached 10%, its highest level since the early eighties.

Lipps, wrapped in a beige raincoat against the cold, looked directly at the camera, his face seeming to reflect the discouragement of many people at the time.

"Fortunately, I had money, so I was not going to go together," Lipps said. "It was still a little nervous because I did not know how long I would be unemployed."

A few months later, he was hired in New York as a child support enforcement officer, a position he continues to occupy.

Alistair Darling, who was Britain's finance minister 10 years ago, recalled that his warnings of an imminent disaster for the economy, shortly before the Lehman accident, had provoked protests from economists and politicians .

"But I found that the breakdown of the financial system was catastrophic," he said.

For Darling, now a Labor member of the upper house of the British parliament, the damage caused by the crisis in Britain was all the more important that the decision made in 2010 by the newly elected government led by the Conservatives was aimed at 39 eradication of the country's budget deficit in just five years.

"What is commonly called austerity has prolonged the slowdown. It took a lot longer to see a recovery and, of course, the process is not complete, "he said.

EMIGRATION

Indeed, for many, the damage caused by the near-collapse of the global financial system and the resulting debt crisis in many European countries remain profound.

Jose Manuel Abel bid farewell to his wife and children and left his homeland in 2012 after losing his job. He worked in Germany before returning to Spain last year.

He now has a temporary job as a waiter, working 17 hours a day, but he hopes to be fired once summer tourists are arrested in Chipiona, a coastal town near Cadiz on the Spanish Atlantic coast.

Unemployment in Spain peaked at around 27% in early 2013 before falling back to just over 15% in the second quarter of this year – still much more than in many other countries, even five years after the economic recovery.

"I work as a waiter and I have no problem with that because I think that any kind of work is respectable," said Abel. "I have studies, training and I intend to use them in the future."

He is also working with friends to create a local political party that will contest the municipal elections in 2019.

"I do not want my children to suffer and live what I had to live," said Abel. "I do not want them migrating and looking for a job opportunity away from this wonderful place."