Who lost Lehman Brothers? Could it have been saved?
As we approach the 10th anniversary of Lehman's collapse on Sept. 15, these questions won't go away. The Lehman bankruptcy is portrayed as the pivotal event that converted severe — but familiar — disruptions in financial markets into a full-blown panic. Nothing like it had occurred in the United States since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Stocks fell; unemployment soared. The skeptics argue that if Lehman had been rescued, the economy would have fared much better.
The officials who handled the Lehman bankruptcy aren't having it. They contend they did all they could. Lehman was too far gone to be saved, except at exorbitant public expense. That's the position of former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, ex-Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, then president of the New York Federal Reserve.