Perhaps Elmer should've been asked: "why are you continuing to make misleading statements NOW?!"

Short-Sellers: blaming short-sellers and negative rumors for "taking the company down" is especially ironic in light of the fact that Elmer was effectively trying to inflate the company's stock and keep customers from defecting by lying about Lehman's financial health. I suppose in Elmer's cartoon world one can lie all they want as long as it's to push a company's stock up, but if customers flee to protect themselves, if investors make a valid decision to sell a bad stock and if short-sellers short a stock of a company in trouble it's a pernicious act. Perhaps Elmer is merely self-centered and thinks customers and the market are just supposed to serve him.

Of course it's worth noting that there are some in the business media who believe that short-sellers are the blame for Lehman's demise as well, so it's not just Elmer who is trying to pretend that an insolvent company can operate indefinitely as long as it has a healthy stock price.

The real issue here is that short-sellers didn't take Lehman down, Elmer and the other executives in charge of the company are the ones responsible. To blame short-sellers would mean we'd have to ignore the $5 billion collateral call from J.P. Morgan Chase, the $3.9 billion quarterly loss and the need to raise another $3-5 billion in collateral. Not to mention the overvalued real estate portfolio and a host of other financial issues, which were making other I-Banks very wary of the company especially after they had looked through the company's books.

In other words in order to blame short-sellers with a straight face one would have to ignore Lehman's malaise ridden balance sheet, and pretend that it was a perfectly healthy company that would still be doing just fine if a bunch of short-sellers hadn't targeted the company with false rumors. 

I.e. there were very legitimate reasons to short Lehman's stock that had nothing to do spreading false rumors or breaking the law in anyway, shape or form.

The ultimate hypocrisy is that the Hedge Fund clients (that Lehman was begging not to leave) engage in the shorting of  stocks on a regular basis, and I'm sure that Lehman's proprietary trading units and the Hedge Funds they own have done the same. In other words: Lehman is only against short-selling when they think they can blame it for their problems/use it to deflect attention from their own issues/defect blame away from their executives. 

While troubled times often precipitate the designation of Hobgoblins we can blame for our woes it's time we start holding the feet of these executives to the fire and force them to take FULL responsibility,  Elmer Fudd stood before Congress and effectively lied through his teeth and blamed everyone in the world but himself by telling lie after lie after lie. Anyone looking for a classic example of audacity or "chutzpah" needs to look no further than Elmer's "performance" before Congress. 

Or maybe it wasn't audacity at all, maybe it was just a series bold faced lies, or the actions of an individual with a persecution complex who doesn't believe he should have to face any consequences for his actions and nothing is his fault.

How else can you explain an individual who purports to claim responsibility for the demise of his company, yet blames "outside forces" as the ultimate cause despite the very real problems within the company?

Either way it's no wonder that companies like Lehman are failing when their executives seem incapable of admitting that they're even fallible, let alone that they could possibly be responsible for their companies going down the tubes.

Finally while Elmer's performance was farcical in nature so were the Congressional hearings themselves, after all when is the last time that Congressional hearings involving corporate executives (outside of Enron) has led to any sort of changes, persons being held responsible, etc, etc? They're nothing more than dog and pony shows that insult the intelligence of the American people via claiming to be a method by which Congress will "get to the bottom of this, or do something to address the problem.

In all likelihood Elmer will ride off into the sunset with his $350 million dollar and aside from facing a few protestors and angry ex-employees here and there he will suffer very little consequences, thus setting the stage for the next round of corporate executives to behave in a similar manner. 

Sources:

The WSJ Law Blog: "Liability for Lehman? -- Our Capital Position at the Moment is Strong" -- Dan Slater, October 6, 2008 .

The WSJ : "The Two Faces of Lehman's Fall" -- Carrick Mollenkamp, Susanne Craig, Jeffrey McCracken and John Hilsenrath, October 6, 2008.

The WSJ: "Lawmakers Lay Into Lehman CEO" -- Susanne Craig, October 7,2008.