Lehman Brothers chief financial officer Erin Callan this morning faced what was perhaps the biggest challenge of her career: explaining Lehman's losses and need to raise capital to the markets. She began by lowering expectations--saying the Q&A on this morning's conference call would be limited because this was a preliminary announcement and more granular numbers were still being worked out--and wound up answering many questions in great details.

She's getting mixed reactions. Many are impressed by her confidence and competence with talking about Lehman's large asset sell-off and deleveraging. Others, however, aren't sure that Lehman really has a enough of a grip of the risks faced by its portfolio. So we decided to ask the experts, you.

After the jump, our poll on Callan's Monday morning performance.

Some of you have expressed distaste for the new look of things around here. “I don’t like the grey font.” “I don’t like my content on the left side.” “I don’t like having to sign in to write something [Ed. Note: You don’t.]” “I don’t like this.” “I don’t like that.” “I don’t like the italics, I may set up a competing site [Ed. Note: Do it, I fucking dare you].” “I don’t like that there aren’t any Carney Crotch shots.” “Gayest website ever after this redesign.”

One of you bet (yourself) that we probably didn’t have the “cojones” to make a poll asking who likes the new format. I can’t speak for Carney, but you, Guest at 9:02AM, bet wrong about me. Though the results will be absolutely meaningless and not get us to consider even for a second changing it back (it’s so cute that some of you thought it might), I offer you, after the jump, your mother fucking poll. I hope you enjoy it, as least as much as you enjoy the new look of DealBreaker.com

If you are totally confused why DealBreaker has been doing so much politics this week, we're now ready to reveal the secret: it's fat Tuesday. We've been drunk all week in advance of our annual observance of Lent! Drink early and often.

Also, people are irrationally voting all around the country today. But don't vote at the official voting spots--it only encourages them--vote right here. Make your voice heard. Or at least your click.

(And, yes, we realize the poll should ask "whom do you support" but that sounds too mannered for a political poll.)

Just in case you missed it last night, we're bringing the reader poll on today's Fed decision back to the top of the page. There's about an hour left to vote for this before we shut down the poll and start gearing up to cover the aftermath.

Following this morning's economic reports the widely expected 50 bps cut from the Fed became a little less widely expected, with the futures showing a drop from 86% to 72%. An internal poll at Morgan Stanley, however, showed the opposite, with 73% of respondents predicting only a 25 bps cut, according to an email sent to clients this afternoon.

Our own polling, which had over 1,700 respondents, showed almost an even split between a 25 bps cut and a 50 bps cut. No other position got a significant number of votes. So we’re asking again, with just two options.

Our polls have an excellent track record of correctly calling the Fed's interest rate moves. The masters of the economy meet again this week, so it's time for another reader poll!

The Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee meets tomorrow and is widely expected to cut rates. When we polled readers last week, a plurality of 34% predicted a 25 basis point cut. The second favorite was a fifty bip cut, garnering 22 percent of the vote. Close behind, however, were those who predicted no cut: 19%.

Have expectations moved over the last couple of days? Will the continuing story of credit driven write-downs from major financial institutions push the Fed into an even greater cut? Or does the dollar's recovery this morning indicate that the Fed is going to hold the line on interest rates? Cast your vote below.

Incidentally, our polls have a very good record of predicting Fed moves. Later today we'll make it more challenging by asking readers to predict any changes in the discount rate.

It feels early to start talking about next week's Fed meeting but we won't let that stop us. Let's tell the Fed what to do.

We are closing in on 2 p.m. now. Our official plan was to close up shop and retire to lunch for the rest of the day an hour ago. But we can procrastinate about everything, even not working.

But what are you still doing at work? Why are you reading the internet instead of finishing up and getting out of there? Don't you know it's the day before Thanksgiving? The airports are already insane and the trains are packed. If you don't leave now, you'll never get back to Wisconsin tonight.

Actually, it's kind of comforting to know that so many of you are still out there, staring at your computers, hitting refresh and hoping Bess posts one more thing before she shakes her moneymaker over the Hudson for a holiday in the homeland. We'd like to know why you are still there.

After the jump, take our poll on why you can't leave work early today.

Let's assume for a moment that the rumors (and CNBC's Bob Pisani) are right and the board of the New York Stock Exchange is holding an unscheduled meeting right now. Views about what is happening are divided, so we figured we'd go to the experts: our readers. What do you think is going on at the NYSE board meeting today?

The people have spoken. In our totally unauthorized, unaffiliated, unscientific and unauthoritative poll for who should become the permanent anchor of CNBC’s midday show The Call, the clear winner is…

Well, let’s not rush into things. It was a hotly contested plebiscite at every level. In the end, the second place contender ended within striking distance of the first, just seven percent behind. A lot of the real action was in the second tier of contestants—Rebecca Jarvis, Trish Regan and Erin Burnett. They all finished within just a few points of each other.

Perhaps most surprising was the poor performance of Maria Bartiromo. Once the top star of the network, many of her fans seem to have deserted her. Or, you know, maybe they just don’t read DealBreaker.

After the jump, the progress and final results of the DealBreaker Reader Poll.

One of our favorite trader friends called us yesterday absolutely overjoyed by the volatility. "Days like this," he said. "Days like this are why you become a trader. One of the best days ever."

We've got an hour before the market opens this morning so we figured we'd ask our favorite experts to predict what would happen by the time it closes. So DealBreaker readers, please vote on the market's direction in the poll to the left.

We understand that the name is officially being changed to CSI: Wall Street.

[After the jump, read the press release from CBS]

This morning opened with news of another private equity buyout. If this deal had happened a few years ago, it would have made headlines as a blockbuster deal. It’s not that the $24.7 billion Goldman and the Texas Pacific Group have agreed to pay for Alltell is now chump change. But in these days of mega-buyouts, it’s just one more on the list.

Last Thursday we discussed the causes of the going private boom. Is it CEOs looking for even bigger paydays than those available at public companies? Loose credit? The regulatory burden? Intemperate and impatient public markets? The jumping off point of our conversation was David Wessel’s Capital Exchange column in the Wall Street Journal. But somehow we forgot to touch down on our favorite landing strip: the minds of our readers.

So this morning we bring you a reader poll asking: what’s behind the rush out of public markets?

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has found that women and men, at least in Europe and the US, work about the same number of hours in a week. In the US, men only work 4 more minutes a day than women on average. Not that you can’t be infinitely productive in four minutes (at least that’s what I tell my partners myself), but any random tally of minor daily events makes that figure a virtual push.

In terms of how time is spent, many of the nuclear family sitcom stereotypes hold true – men spend more time at work and more time watching the tube while women do more housework and sleep more.

The goal of the study was to try and find out why Americans work harder than Europeans, and whether the notion of the “double burden,” or the fact that women work twice as hard as men because of housework, was true. Many of the female subjects’ complaints that they have less spare time than their male counterparts are explained by the increased hours spent in the sack.

Equality does appear to correlate with prosperity, despite Bess Levin’s findings in Waziristan. From the NBER researchers:

There appears to be a link between the work gap between men and women and how rich a country is. The smaller the gap, the richer the GDP per person. Equality appears to pay.

What about finance? Do male and female analysts work the same 100 hour weeks at a bank? Do MDs of both sexes make equally ridiculous requests before getting on the same 5:15pm train to Greenwich?

Women comprise 42% of the total workforce (age 16 and over) in “management, business and financial operations occupations” (i.e. – finance-type stuff) according to a November 2006 NBER study on Women in the Labor Force (see the data here).

Finance may me a more male-centered occupation, but it is not that much more of a male-centered professional choice. Out of the total women in the labor force, 13.2% decide to go into finance-type stuff. This isn’t that far off the 15.5% of men in the labor force who make the same decision. With a nearly equal percentage of aspirants, it seems that no sex has a monopoly on a passion for finance-type stuff, or at least winging it until b-school or a sugar daddy/momma comes along.

Now, it’s up to DealBreaker readers to decide:

Do men or women work harder? – [BBC]

Some quick and mixed reactions to todays Fed Statement. “The Fed eliminated a reference to a moderation in the housing market’s downturn and was vague enough on its future intentions to convince the assembled parties on trading floors and at computer desks that all was still ok, and if it wasn’t, the Fed would come in for the big rescue, or something like that,” Market Beat’s David Gaffen wrote under taunting headline “Stagflation Rules! Buy Stocks!”

“The Fed's statement was as close to sarcasm as you might ever expect to hear from that august body,” Barry Ritholz said.

"Quiet Carney. I'm trying to pretend I know John Mack's assistant," Bess Levin told us.

We’re hardly going to pretend we have some deeper insight into the meaning of today’s Fed statement than the equity markets or the bond markets. (Or that we can tell whether the various movements of stocks and bonds following the release mean equities and bonds agree or disagree on the statement.) So we’re going to ask the smartest people we know—you—in the best way we know how—a reader poll.

You called today's market-action correctly in this morning's Reader Poll, reading the early signs of morning rise as an indicator that the Dow would close up for the day. It's up nearly sixty points as we post this item. Good work!

So now we'll turn to you to answer the only remaining pressing question of the day: what caused yesterday's downturn? If you want to do a little homework, feel free to peruse our Market Plunge archive. Or check out Abnormal Returns' post-plunge round-up.