Quotes of the Day

So much for "Masters of the Universe." On Monday, being an employee of Lehman Bros. looked about as much fun as a perp walk. Overnight, the 158-year-old Wall Street behemoth filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a stunning collapse that may leave thousands of employees without jobs. With $639 billion in assets, the firm's filing is the largest in history. Throughout the day, as media crews hovered around the entrance to the firm's Midtown Manhattan headquarters, some of Wall Street's best and brightest trickled out onto the pavement, their faces crestfallen and their ties yanked askew.

On their way out the door, employees of the nation's fourth-largest investment bank had to wade through a crush of onlookers drawn to the carnage like sharks to blood. Reporters buttonholed staffers, asking what it felt like to lose their jobs. Executive recruiters bustled around, extending business cards to anyone whose suit suggested he or she might be a banker. A man leaning against the building's facade held aloft a printed sign on white letter-sized paper: LOOKING TO HIRE SYS ADMIN. Most employees passed through the scrum without acknowledging it.

The few who did talk seemed unable to summon much emotion, saying they remained in the dark about the firm's future. "We don't know what happens on the [executive floors]," says a 31-year-old analyst. After two years at Lehman, he arrived at work Monday morning without any idea of what might happen beyond what he read in the Wall Street Journal. "The really top execs screwed up very badly," he says. "They wouldn't admit defeat. They were macho. Absolute power corrupts absolutely — that kind of thing." Asked whether management had made any announcements on the firm's next steps, another employee responded: "No, but it's over."

As staffers took stock of their losses, a cottage industry sprouted around them. Geoffrey Raymond, a painter who creates portraits of Wall Street titans — former New York Stock Exchange chairman Dick Grasso, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, ex-Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne — unveiled The Annotated Fuld, a large canvas of the embattled Lehman Bros. leader. Raymond rendered Richard Fuld with yellow brushstrokes, his eyes sunken and gazing into the distance, and invited passers-by to adorn the portrait with personal messages. Lehman employees were offered green markers; non-affiliated onlookers got black ones. Some scrawled angry missives: "The banks are next"; "A symbol of greed and arrogance." Others were weirdly aphoristic: "Greed and ego it was"; "Learn to respect the dollar." Even amid the turmoil, some even mustered a bit of a gallows humor: "Hakuna Matata (It Means No Worries)." Raymond — who began work on the painting about 10 days ago — said he expected to collect some 300 signatures, and hoped to auction the final work on his website for more than $10,000.

Others sought to lend what assistance they could. Having been unable to break through the firm's jammed phone lines, Jason Cohen, a psychiatrist in private practice, made the one hour, 40 min. drive Monday morning from Freehold, N.J. with the intention of offering counsel to dumbstruck employees. But after witnessing the scene unfolding on the sidewalk, he decided to hold back. "I don't have the heart to approach people carrying boxes out of their offices," he says.

(See photos of the troubled economy here.)

• Alex Altman