His goal? To say as little as possible about LehmanвЂ™s demise and his role in it, and yet justify the hype surrounding what Marcum LLP, the accounting and financial advisory firm that sponsored the event, billed as FuldвЂ™s first public appearance since Lehman imploded. ThatвЂ™s what happens when you are a man on a mission. Trying to justify the unjustifiable, he seemed nearly oblivious to the bizarre surroundings. Looking none the worse for wear, nearly seven years after presiding over perhaps the most calamitous disaster in American financial history-the shocking bankruptcy filing (and subsequent liquidation) of Lehman Brothers (1850вЂ“2008, R.I.P.)-he still dressed in his signature starched white shirt and blue tie, and he still had the same stony-eyed glare that won him the nickname вЂњThe GorillaвЂќ during his 14-year reign as chairman and C.E.O. вЂњMy children always ate all the time when I was talking, so IвЂ™m used to this.вЂќ вЂњAnd by the way, all of you, please continue to eat,вЂќ he said at the outset.

Here, on May 28, in front of 1,500 or so small-time investors gobbling down filet mignon and chatting among themselves at the Grand Hyatt hotel, on 42nd Street in New York, was the former Wall Street titan attempting to relieve himself of the emotional and psychological burdens of wrecking his company.

Try as one might, there was no escaping the theater-of-the-absurd aspect of Dick FuldвЂ™s appearance as the keynote speaker at a conference that he would not have been caught dead at when he was in his prime.

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