Panel grills CEO of Lehman

Waxman then ticked off some of Fuld's other personal assets -- a $14-million oceanfront home in Florida, a vacation home in Sun Valley, Idaho, and an art collection "filled with million-dollar paintings."

"It seems that the system worked for you, but it didn't seem to work for the rest of the country and the taxpayers who now have to pay up to $700 billion to bail out our economy," Waxman said. "We can't continue to have a system where Wall Street executives privatize all the gains and then socialize all the losses."

Waxman released 24 pages of internal company e-mails and other documents that he said undermined Fuld's "contention that Lehman was overwhelmed by forces outside its control."

Fuld said he had more of a stake than anybody in the company's future, noting that he never sold the vast majority of his Lehman stock and still owned 10 million shares when the company filed for bankruptcy.

"I firmly believed we were going to turn back to profitability," he said.

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jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com