Stephen Foley: Wall Street's habit of 'window dressing' isn't illegal – it's just wrong

US Outlook: Even regulators have taken to using the phrase "window dressing" to describe Wall Street banks' habit of reducing their short-term borrowings for a few days around the end of each quarter, in order to make themselves look less risky than they really are.

Window dressing is too benign a term. What banks, led by Lehman Brothers, but also including Bank of America and Citigroup, have been doing is much worse than simply dressing up their finest wares in the shop-front window. It is more like finding an Oscar de la Renta dress in the window of a Wal-Mart. It is misleading, and often deliberately so.

Thanks to an examiner's report commissioned by the bankruptcy courts, we know that Lehman even had a name for the accounting trick: Repo 105. At the end of each quarter before its collapse in 2008, Lehman was able to make its balance sheet look $50bn (£32bn) lighter than it really was, deceiving worried investors who were pressing it to reduce its leverage. (more)