Among the more complicated, he says, is former Lehman Brothers chief Dick Fuld, and for that reason a favorite character of his to write.

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Essentially, she had hit a glass cliff: Dick Fuld had brought her in as CFO at a time when it was too late to save the firm.

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Not only did she have a direct phone line to CEO Dick Fuld for many years before becoming CFO, she also rocked pink Prada outfits on the trading floor.

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The Last Days of Lehman Brothers imagines CEO Dick Fuld's attempt to save the bank in its final days, and his appeals to treasury secretary Hank Paulson for a bailout.

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Lehman, in case your brain has blurred that traumatic memory, collapsed because its executives like Dick Fuld and COO Joe Gregory thought the bank was invincible from any real damage and bet the house accordingly.

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Just compare the way Wall Street treated the recent travails of Knight Capital Group Inc. and its well-respected CEO Thomas Joyce to the way it watched, abetted and even enjoyed the slow, brutal demise of Bear Stearns and its CEO, Jimmy Cayne, and Lehman Brothers and its CEO, Dick Fuld.

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Yet policymakers are as in as much denial that there is a big problem (i.e. with the euro rather than any individual country) as Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson were that there was a housing bust, as Dick Fuld was that Lehman was toast, or as the IMF was that Thailand, let alone Asia, had profound economic weaknesses.

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