WASHINGTON — The now-bankrupt investment bank Lehman Bros.
arranged millions in bonuses for fired executives as it pleaded
for a federal lifeline, lawmakers learned Monday, as Congress
began investigating what went so wrong on Wall Street to prompt
a $700 billion government bailout.  The first in a series of
congressional hearings on the roots of the financial meltdown
yielded few major revelations about Lehman's collapse, and none
about why government officials, as they scrambled to avert
economic catastrophe, declined to rescue the flagging company
while injecting tens of billions of dollars into others.  But it
allowed lawmakers still smarting from a politically painful vote
Friday for the largest federal market rescue in history to put a
face on their outrage at corporate chieftains who took home
hundreds of millions of dollars while betting on risky mortgage-
backed investments that ultimately brought the financial system
to its knees.  That face was Richard Fuld Jr., the Lehman chief
executive who sat fo