Caught a little gem of deliberate obfuscation over at Vermont Tiger today. The Tiggers saw fit to post Bruce Lisman’s unavoidable commentary piece* on the end of the Legislative session. Basically, he bemoans the Leg’s failure to adopt “common sense” policies on health care, education, energy, and the budget. To put it another way, he bemoans the Democratic majority’s failure to adopt thoroughly Republican policies. Amazing!

*It’s been published absolutely every-damn-where over the past few days. Which is nice, because it’s not like Bruce Lisman has any other outlets for his ideas. Well, except for his $200,000-and-counting vanity project, Campaign for Vermont. Yeah, poor guy needs a little help promoting his agenda. Thanks, Vermont media!

But the real howler comes at the end, in the brief bio note identifying the author. This is how Vermont Tiger describes our favorite wealthy amateur politician and Republican-in-Nonpartisan-Clothing:

Bruce Lisman is the founder of Campaign for Vermont.  He was born in Burlington’s Old North End and attended Burlington public schools before going on to graduate from the University of Vermont.

Hmm. Hm, hm, hm. There’s a bit of a gap there. A gap of about four decades — the time he spent in the sunless canyons of Wall Street, amassing a skrillion-dollar fortune.

Somehow the Tiggers skipped over the two-thirds of Bruce Lisman’s life that had nothing to do with Vermont and had everything to do with making a huge pile in high finance. Which surprises me; I thought Vermont Tiger was solidly in favor of wealth. In Lisman’s case, they appear to be ashamed of it.

AFter the jump: Evidence of his wealth, and the collapse of his lifelong employer.

Nobody except Bruce and his team of accountants and lawyers knows exactly how rich he is. But we can offer one indication, in the form of his last known residence in Manhattan.

It was a lovely little pied-à-terre on 5th Avenue between 72nd and 73rd Streets. Overlooking Central Park. A few blocks south of the Metropolitan Museum. It featured four bedrooms and five bathrooms (?); he’d bought it for $13.125 million in 2006, and unloaded it in 2009 at a slight loss — $12.8 million.

My heart bleeds. Did something bad happen to the economy between 2006 and 2009? Something that might have caused a drop in high-end Manhattan real estate prices? I seem to recall some sort of close brush with global economic calamity during that time frame. Something to do with greedy bastards on Wall Street, I do believe.

A shame that it cost Mr. Lisman a few hundred grand on the resale. It may also have caused an early end to his Wall Street career. He’d spent pretty much his entire professional life at Bear Stearns, working his way up to the top ranks of the financial giant. He was in his 24th year in a plush Bear Stearns executive office when the corporation sadly cratered in 2008 due to its insane overexposure in the subprime mortgage securities market.

Here’s a little tidbit from the last days of Bear Stearns, courtesy of a Wall Street Journal postmortem:

In the middle of the afternoon, Bruce Lisman, the usually taciturn 61-year-old co-head of Bear Stearns’s stock division, climbed atop a desk near his fourth-floor office and demanded his traders’ attention. “Let’s stay focused,” he bellowed. “Keep working hard. Bear Stearns has been here a long time, and we’re staying here. If there’s any news, I’ll let you know, if and when I know it.”

Less than three days later, the wreckage of Bear Stearns was bought at fire-sale prices by JP Morgan, and Lisman made a soft landing in his new bosses’ executive suites. But then, a matter of months later, he retired. Which begs the question: did he really retire, or was he gently shown the door by a company that didn’t want to be encumbered by executives from a failed financier?  

That’s all rank speculation, of course. And I’m sure that’s why Vermont Tiger chose to pretend that Bruce Lisman’s New York years never happened — instead, portraying him as some sort of home-brewed hero, a son of the land, a Vermonter through and through.