Dick Fuld Carries His Own Golf Clubs

Financial-crisis anniversary stories continue to pour out of newspapers as the New York Times leads by saying “A Year After a Cataclysm, Little Change on Wall St.” The story details how regulatory reform is stalled, pay is returning to pre-crisis levels, and few institutions have either closed or performed the kind of fundamental restructuring the public was once led to believe would be vital to the economy’s long-term survival. The paper cites the analysis of economist Simon Johnson, who thinks the banks will hang another bailout on the taxpayers if they are allowed to keep all this up. “They will run up big risks, they will fail again, they will hit us for a big check,” he predicted.

The Wall Street Journal continues the recent trend of Lehman Bros. stories, looking at the tortured and humbled Dick Fuld, former CEO of the firm, whose collapse has been cited as both the first major bomb to go off in the crisis and the event that caused the government and the public to sit up and take notice. Fuld has started his own enterprise and told former Lehman staff at one new firm born of its wreckage that he “will never heal from this.” He also carries his own golf clubs these days, according to a caddy at the private club near his 10,000-square-foot home in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Public service announcement: Ikea would like you to know it’s hard to do business sans corruption in Russia. The Times received documents from the furniture giant explaining how it refused to pay kickbacks to power companies as it opened new stores there, instead renting diesel generators to provide power. The nose thumbing at the utilities worked for a time, but soon enough an Ikea executive was caught taking kickbacks on generator contracts. Ikea has sued, but Russian courts have perversely awarded damages to the generator companies whose contracts were canceled. “We have encountered something here that is outside the scope of what we normally encounter,” one Ikea executive said of the company’s lucrative yet thorny Russian endeavors. “I have never experienced anything like this.”

General Motors (MTLQQ) proves you can cut too close to the bone on pay. The Times says the company rescinded pay cuts for white-collar workers because “its pay scales were no longer competitive with other automakers and manufacturing companies.” Meanwhile, Chrysler Financial has, per Obama administration guidelines, posted strict new rules on employee expenses to its Web site. The Washington Post writes that many of the standard perks of business travel have been sliced back under the mandates. Bank of America has also posted its rules, which are much less detailed than Chrysler Financial’s, says the paper. We’ll have to wait until Monday to read AIG's (AIG) and Citibank’s (C) guidelines, and perhaps even longer for the remaining three companies on the bailout list required to follow suit.

The Post says that Google’s chief economist sees an American economic recovery on the horizon—based on the search habits of the general public. The paper also reports that Newsweek (part of the Washington Post Co., owner of Slate and The Big Money) will adopt a subscription model familiar to readers of the Economist and the Atlantic: fewer, more devoted readers, paying higher prices. The business move echoes Editor Jon Meacham’s refocus of the weekly magazine earlier this year. The Times reports that the Post executive in charge of the ill-fated salon series planned for the home of publisher Katharine Weymouth has left the company. Charles Pelton’s resignation letter indicated he would return to California but act as a consultant for the Post.

The Forest Stewardship Council, a nonprofit, has long been the arbiter of environmentally friendly wood and paper products. But, the Times writes, an industry-sponsored group is pushing its own green certification. The FSC’s lawyer, who has filed complaints with the FTC and IRS, said the industry is trying to “confuse the marketplace” and “promote their sales.”