Three days that shook the world

I don’t think the Government should have let Lehman fail. Maybe a bridge loan could have helped them keep operating…we’re paying the price now for undervaluing some of the folks there. Granted, they made some mistakes too..

the government should have let all the banks that made poor choices and bad loans fail, instead, our smart government officials had the bright idea to give the crooks our tax dollars so they can give bonus money to the very people who got us into this mess and some will still fail. smart, real smart!!!

I still think the decision to let Lehman go down was the right one, at least back then. I harbor no respect for Paulson & Co, but I believe that he did attempt to show some backbone that one time, it was a matter of setting precedent. I’d like to suggest one thing – if you’re going to bail out these scumbags with our money, I want to see them lynched, and I don’t mean a slap on the wrist at Congressional hearings. Fuld, Sullivan, Cox, Paulson (remember where this guy came from), all of these high rollers who thought they were Gods. This slime and its ilk are now in charge of our money and public policy, busy bailing out their cronies. Where does this stop?!

Most of the guys who are commenting on this site are talking about how the government did the right thing. But the fact is while the government might not have saved the lehman brothers , it put in a busload of money into other organizations like AIG and Merrill Lynch. So how can you justify one investment bank getting federal help and another one not getting it.
That is just plain stupid.

No they shouldn’t have. Nor should they have saved AIG etc. What is article clearly shows is that the current global economy is NOT based on free market principles. Rather, it is a centrally planned economy run by and for the benefit of an oligarchy of elites. Let the house of cards that they have built fall and then let us rebuild on sound, sustainable, democratic, fair and free market principles. Sure it will be painful, but the alternative is pain for the majority and entrenchment of the elite. We need the finacial equivalent of “off with their heads” to truly fix this mess they’ve made.

There is not one person that is clairvoyant and able to see the future. We are unable to move wforward with 100% certainty of anything. If I am unable to make my vehicle or house payment the government isn’t going to pay for my mistakes so why would they pay for someone elses mistakes? We have to eliminate all bad debt before we can repair this mess. I believe the correct thing to do is to let all business fail that have dealt themselves a bad hand. Reap what you sow if you will. Only then can we start a new.

I believe history will show that yes, the government should have saved Lehman — but that’s strictly Monday morning quarterbacking. Who would ever have guessed that the economy would spiral into unprecedented turmoil or that the entire world would feel ripple effects? The economy is affecting us all, terribly, but based on the facts as known at the time, I believe the bankers did their best. This is (awful, tumultuous) history in the making.

What goes around comes around. In the fall of 1998 Long Term Capital also run by these Wall Street masters of the universe types, faced a liquidity crunch. The two parties that passed on helping or would only offer minimal help were taaadaaa, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. Paulson was then co-chair of Goldman with Corizine leading the work out. Ten years later he is Sec. of Treasury and gives the age old Roman hand gesture, Thumbs Down! Check out the account on wickipedia under Long Term Capital. Wall Street has a long memory.

Everyone involved in issuing mortgages that clearly could not be repaid should be put in jail,not bailed out.

I think Lehman Brother sould have been saved.
I am against all bailouts, but since no one listen to me, the Elected Officals voted for the bailout.
The goverment can’t decide who will be bailout and who will not.There is vested interest here.The regulators were asleep at the wheel.The 106 Congress created this mess.

what else could have been done besides using tax payer money. put it this way, if the goverment pumps in money this means there will be more money in the economy. if i currently own 1 portion of that total money in the economy, what would happen to the value of my money when i still own that 1 portion but the total money in the economy has been increased significantly??

Hank rhymes with bank and Blankety-Blank, for that matter. Now there’s a chance at removing mark to market at least. Left, right? Makes no difference what you call it – alot of folks are out of luck and jobs. Something more than shoes should be thrown his way.

Simple. Lehman was a symptomof a bigger problem. Saving them would be one more band aid from the taxpayers. We seem to be handing them as if there will be no day of reckoning. Every action will cause another set of issues. I sure hope we can live with all of the unintended consequenses. We all know the real problem – over inlated real estate values fueling a 70% consumer spending GDP. Unsustainable.

Looking at the endless bailouts the government has handed out since, with who knows how many more to come, then ABSOLUTELY they should have bailed LEH. No reason to let them be the one fatality and save everyone else. Equal treatment under the law….

no, absolutely not, no matter what the consequences are / were then and now.

I only have a high school diploma,
but somehow this doesn’t pass the
smell test. Executives flying around
in corporate jets to quick fix the
broken economy. Maybe I’m more of
a hick than I realized. I’ll have
to find my straw hat again, even though
it’s winter.

By now of course it is obvious Lehman should have been saved. Just plain stubborn folly of punishing the gamblers on Wall Street has cost the USA and the whole world untold TRILLIONS of dollars as result of Lehman collapse and follow-up loss of confidence in the financial system . What fools.

Posted By ALAN LUTKUS CLEVELAND OHIO : December 15, 2008 3:52 pm

Do you have ANY evidence of this, because I have vast quantitites to the contrary, showing a broad range of direct measures that both before and after the Lehman Brothers collapse demonstrates this event to be a blip in the precipitation. In fact, three months down the line, it’s AMAZING that the “free market” financial hucksters, parasites and terrorists who have brought us this mess have the FREAKING NERVE to place the blame for their PLAGUE on humanity on insufficient socialization of capitalism to support them like a proverbial welfare-baby on crack.

By now of course it is obvious Lehman should have been saved. Just plain stubborn folly of punishing the gamblers on Wall Street has cost the USA and the whole world untold TRILLIONS of dollars as result of Lehman collapse and follow-up loss of confidence in the financial system . What fools.

Posted By ALAN LUTKUS CLEVELAND OHIO : December 15, 2008 3:52 pm

And yet there is absolutely no evidence to suggest this and all evidence to the contrary. The credit crisis began with subprime mortgage crisis, the credit freeze and wild market precipitation and fluctuation began at least weeks before the Lehman collapse and was on a steady downward trend months before. There has been nothing to suggest that the Lehman collapse was anything more than a blip of many since the real crisis began. Yet you free-market socialists really want to blame the lack of taxpayer bailout on this, when NOTHING has suggested that the over 2 TRILLION invested was anything but another market scheme to defraud and deflect. What the government should have done from day one, was to provide all direct lending necessary, starting with pilot programs to provide ALL education loans during the crisis DIRECT and at bargain basement prices, so that the financial parasite and terrorist sector knew there place in this mess INCLUDING THEIR EXPENDIBILITY. AND THE ONLY WAY PRIVATE INDUSTRY (those that used this threat and abandonment strategy to create competitive revenue, the way it’s being used on the automotive industry and didn’t collapse) WOULD BE ALLOWED BACK IN THE REINDEER LENDING GAME is if they played BY OUR RULES.

Short sellers killed all of us. Good job Mr. Cox.

Anyone whh has dealt with arrogant SOB investment bankers from Wall Street knows that the greed and self interestb has run rampant for many years. IB’s have been lining their pockets for a very long time always telling the rest of we working stiffs how smart they are and how many homes they have and by the way have you been to Prague this year etc. Government’s intervention in the Wall Street debacle is just welfare for the wealthy. Teses firms should have filed for bankruptcy just as the auto companies may have to do and certainly as main street would have to do. When my children are through with college I will have $500,000 in school loans that I will pay on for the rest of my life. Any one going to bail me out? NOT. I pay my mortgage and credit card debts on time. Hello Mr. Paulson, I’m down on my knees. Look at what all of these self describe wonder boys have done to America. Shame on them and shame on us.

Saved Lehman? NO WAY. I am sorry, but I do not subscribe to the concept that the financial industry gets bailouts because their special and cannot be allowed to fail. BS. Free market system. It’s necessary to let them fail and let the people accept the consequences of their actions. Only then, can the true lessons be learned. To allow these azzklowns to get away with engineering this debacle and pull it off is nothing more than the scam of the century. Alot of people saw this coming years ago and you can’t tell me they didn’t either. These CEO’s should be in prison and their companies should be allowed to die.

BIG FAT NO! The CRISIS would have come sooner or later. The fact that money was being doled us as drunks to people/institutions who could not cover the principal, greed existed, and complacent authorities just wanted a paycheck & did not hold their jobs seriously where financial responsibility for the country should have been a priority. The FALL was inevitably going to happen regardless. Better now than later because it could have brought us instant DEPRESSION vs. a deep RECESSION. There is still HOPE and building back a CASTLE will always entail having a MESS before the completed remodeling.

A foundational organizational principle: The persons who created a problem are not the persons asked to fix the problem.

Paulson and his crew created the problem years ago…

I think the answer is and will be unknown for the forseeable future. Might the law of unintended consequences be appropriate here?

Does anyone know, even now, how to fully value the deleveraging?
How can these numbers be properly determined? They can’t, and aren’t the same people responsible for the mess we are now in responsible for damage control.

For the sake of all, let’s hope these guys are as smart as they think they are. I, and the vast majority of the American public have our doubts, to say the least.

They did what they thought was right at the time given the facts and circumstances. Next time will think twice

The gov. should have bailed out Lehman. Pure unbridled capitalism is a recipe for disaster. Gov. intervention is a must in certain situations and this was one. Big mistake. BIG.

yep, 100% they did the right thing. In order to have a free market that works the excess has to be removed every now and then. I think they should be all left to go under if they are not strong enough. This goes for airlines, auto industry, farming and steel. It is like a forest that burns, yeah it’s ugly for awhile but eventually new growth comes through and a new strong forest evolves.I am beginning to think the USA is a socialist nation with all it’s buy outs and bail outs. Imagine during normal times another country did this? They would be singled out and have trade embargo’s placed on them.

IF The governmet had saved lehman brothers ? all this panic & damage wont be in the market so the cost will be greater less what we experiencing right now in financial maket ….

Milton Friedman, Marxist Economist.
Who knew?

What began as a Demand Side Liquidity Problem has become a candy store shopping spree by the Leftist community to guarantee that what they could not do at the ballot box or through the courts they could do by hollering “The Sky is Falling!”

What we will get is a massive terra forming of what resources we have left to build 8 lane highways from Barney Frank’s district to Chris Dodd’s hometown – See the Robert C Byrd Expressway from one 2 holer to another 2 holer downstate. Meanwhile, we will be forced to use compact flourescent bulbs by the “Import China’s Mercury to America’s Landfills Act”.

The Lust for Power is astonishing.

Yes; Lehmann should have been bailed out; it was not because of teh Bush-like antics of Henry Paulson; he got rid of one of his greatest rivals in Lehmann from investment banking world, the same philosophy that Bush & his cronies, including Paulson (& now the southern blocks are doing against Detroit big 3); tshi has led to a massive unwinding that has put the US economy in throes of a depression. The inflated house values were caused by a philosophy of democratisation of US home owenership under Clinton; the Wall street execs fueled the fire, but it started & thrived with us, the common man of US. This depression or lost decade (from 2007 till 2020) will teach us a lesson in good earnest & renew an old adage – cut your coat according to your cloth

It is difficult to stand by and watch corporations flounder. Unfortunately, having the government bail out poor financial leadership does not solve the problem of the “bad behavior” that has become commonplace in the American financial world. Too many individuals live beyond their means via credit. Lending organizations encourage this behavior. Of course when the loans and credits aren’t (and for the most part can’t) be paid, the lender is going to lose money. By having the government bail out the lender, without changing the corporations behavior on spending money it hasn’t collected, or changing society’s behavior in living beyond means, then the cycle continues without ever having the market being able to correct itself by “weeding out” those corporations that are not being run soundly. Indeed this maybe be over simplification of a very complex issue. The more the government pays out to bail out companies that have run themselves dry, the larger the debt is going to become and the more the average American is going to take it on the chin for someone else’s mistakes.

Yes, letting Lehman fail was the right thing to do. And, it looks like the last right thing that Paulson did. Bailouts are unacceptable, period.

Absolutely Lehman should have been saved. It has been, is and always will be about the perception and emotion. The action sent a chill of disbelief, fear and eventually panic throughout the financial world. It has ground the economy to its knees. It has destroyed all trust amongst business associates and banks. It has frightened the whole of America.

greed, risk, failure. bailout? c’mon, really….. natural market forces gone forever, thank you very much.

The ramifications of the domino effecr put in place by the collapse of Lehman surpass the cost of saving Lehman by a 20 to 50:1 ratio. There are other non public issues involved or the big honchos either did not understand or were asleep at the switch.

Yes, Lehman needed to be allowed to fail; they had lost too much money.

As a kapitalist, we must allow the failing banks to fail. There are many healthy banks that will step up to grow and fill their places in the market. There is no shortage of banks. Let the market work.

Got to agree with greg who noted 10 bil monthly for Iraq, but nothing for Lehmann, and we have seen the consequences of its failure.
This was a failure by Paulson and others to get the job done. IMHO.

Government regs changed to allow the meltdown to occurr. Without integrity, character, and a concern for their fellow Americans, and our great country, individuals made decisions to steal rather than choose to do the right thing. They had to know what they were risking for short-term gain, but decided to “get theirs”. Now, they have to look in the mirror and see the reality of gambling with the future of our country and nations worldwide. This level of damage amounts to treason. However, since no specific laws were broken(the laws had been changed to allow their actions) they appear to have benefited grandly from their actions without penalty(hope our children are not watching too closely–a new con game that really works! Once Frankenstein was created, nobody understood the ramifications of taking a specific course of action. If you don’t understand something, how can you devise a course of corrective action(for example, Warren Buffet will not invest in anything he cannot understand). In conclusion, I do think our government officials understood the world would go quickly into a worldwide depression; and, even though they seem to be understanding more about how to make Franenstein stand up–may have slowed the ’swoons’ ultimate tragetory—a worldwide depression as our President warned in his G20 meeting

Let’s get one thing straight: Lehman went under because of their toxic balance sheet, not because of anything the government did or didn’t do. This is the risk you run in a capitalist system.

Paulson made a BIG mistake when he didn’t force the other banks to save Lehman. He could have easily done that with the help of FED (with a threat to close it’s discount window).

Look where we are now: banks not lending, businesses closing down, unemployment through the roof… The damage would have been much smaller when saving Lehman.

Let the chips fall where they may!

Positively, NO BAIL OUTS WITH TAX PAYER MONEY!!

The federal goverment did right by not saving Lehman Brothers, and leaving it to the market to resolve. Where the goverment failed, was in the rescue of AIG. The impact of AIG to the global markets was far less than Lehman brothers. We are now in debt 150 billion, and yet there seems to be not enough liquidity injected into AIG that will help them turn around.

You have to let the markets succeed or fail based on their financial decisions. Therefore, if banks, or any other financial institution or enterprise, gamble and lose – they should suffer the consequences. There will be others to fill in the void and, hopefully, be smarter about loans, investments, etc.

“A fool and his money will soon be parted”, they say. I just didn’t know that so few would help so many part with their $$’s. No bailout. We operate in a capitalist society. Let the market sort things out; it always does.

Many of us put 30-40-50 percent down when we bought our homes.. Many of us put our savings in diversified portfolios.. Many of us have lived within our means OUR WHOLE LIVES…and we thought we were safe… most of us didn’t expect huge payouts.. just a safe conservative return…. But that didn’t satisfy the egos on Wall Street – they wanted to get that 2-8-20 million dollar bonus. So all of the mega-Titans of Wall Street did deals, derivatives, credit swaps, bundled sub-prime toxic loans, and engaged a whole host of other things that I haven’t even heard of, let alone understand… and why did they do all of the complicated inter-weaving deals — for safety, to off-set their potential risks… and what did they accomplish — they transferred their risk to us by imploding the market. It used to be that a local bank made local loans… if that bank judged correctly, the loan earned the bank a profit to make more loans and so on and so…. but now, the “bank” doesn’t want to assume the entire risk, so deals are done, parts are sold of or swaps are bought to bet against…. and what NOW happens — instead of one poorly run “bank” folding for having bad management who made poor decisions – now the country teeters on a world wide depression… God, these guys were brilliant…. maybe we should let the B & C students rule the Street for awhile…. they couldn’t do worse!

No bailouts. The market must be allowed to work. Why should taxpayers bear the ultimate cost of Dick Fuld’s $400 million compensation for making the mess?

Time for the USA to look at the Senates relationships to those on the Banking Committee. Dodd, Schumer, Shelby, Bayh, Menendez etc, who have received over $40 million dollars from the same financial industries that have done a great job of destroying many Americans confidence in government and the banking industry. Not to mention all the many jobs lost.

By now of course it is obvious Lehman should have been saved. Just plain stubborn folly of punishing the gamblers on Wall Street has cost the USA and the whole world untold TRILLIONS of dollars as result of Lehman collapse and follow-up loss of confidence in the financial system . What fools.

Saving Lehman at taxpayer expense would only have delayed the crisis.

They should not bail out Lehmans, nor should they have bailed outany of the other firms as they had. Yes we would of felt the sting, but in the end this country would of been better off and we would not be paying for big dollar excutive wages and bonus or they fun time meetings. Ibeleive it would been better to use the money for the main street folks, which would ov re0invested money to start markets anew.

NO! Look up and read the definition of capitalism or free enterprise and you won’t find anything about the opportunity for government/taxpayer help in the event greedy people ruin the business. This bailout happened because connected people (Government and Wall Street) are in cahoots!

A wise man once said tjhose who do not know your history are doomed to repeat it! The great lesson from history is that the great depression was preventable! Back then laissez faire was the order of the day and the nation’s power brokers did not want government interfering with business therefore any business that began to fail was allowed to fail! However, as we know now busineses and banks are linked together with money on deposit in commerial paper or bonds or some form of equity and when they fail every business and person holding investment paper of a failed or bankrupted now holds zero dollars and will quickly spiral out of control. Therefore, this story states a key fact that Paulson right at the beginning says government would not do everything it could to prevent Lehman Brothers from failing!! As we now know Lehman Brothers was a very big player in issuing commercial paper and set the records for bonds with the Lehman Brothers Bond Indeses. What was Paulson and other powere brokers thinking when they did not get creative enough to prevent Lehman Bothers from failing and preventing any cascade into depression from starting???? It is still not too late!

For sure I will not trust an American Bank or another Investment Banker to handle my finances in the future. All are a bunch of Crooks (including Maddoff Invest LLC). And to see now the U.S Treasury to doll out trillions without conditions is absurd. An insult to the taxpayers. The Treasury is on their side, Paulson’s cousin was on Lehman’s payroll just like Ex. Gov Jeb Bush (brother of the President) was a strategic advisor and Theodor Roosevelt two great grand sons.

Proves one things, Reagan theories of “laissez faire” and “let the markets do their MAGIC” are not working when business are managed by crooks.

When Reagan moved into office, the debt of this nation was a manageable 975 Billion Dollars. Thirty years later and 20 years of Republican administrations our debt will approach 14 trillion dollars. Now who is spending?

They bamboozled all of us.

NO!! The Government should help only in cases of extreme emergency such as war, natural catastrophy or widespread epedimic. The exception might be in the way of job creation. However, the gov is already the world’s largest employer – sounds like it’s going to get even bigger. These bailouts are clearly handouts to the very rich.

I worked for a Lehman Brothers subsidiary for years and I was laid off months before Lehman filed for bankruptcy. In truth, I think Lehman got exactly what it deserved and does/did not deserve to be bailed out. They knew what they were doing with the mortgage backed securities and did not care what the fall out would be.

I’m sure I’ll be unpopular here, but I would have let the banks fail (no bailout) and I would have shored up the auto industry along with all other manufacturing that represents the backbone of our economy. We can always find institutions to shuffle money around… as soon as 2 go under, 5 new ones will pop up (hopefully wiser than the last). What we can’t do it make money when none exists.

Sorry for the second post but I wanted to put these bailouts in perspective with compared to total employment. Note – This calculation just assigns a straight average to each worker irrespective of the US’s graduated income tax. i.e. a large proportion of the workers pay little or no income tax

The United States Government started out the year by creating an economic stimulus package for $145 Billion and then continued on by spending $700 Billion on a generic bailout, $122 Billion (bailout #1 – $84 Billion, bailout #2 – $38 Billion) to get into the insurance business (AIG), and $200 Billion for Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. I’m sure there are more but I’ve lost count. Anyway, the total amount “borrowed” against some murky future is at least $1.167 Trillion.

Using 2007 data on total employment there are 138,973,000 people who work – No distinction is made between part and full time employment or individual tax rates – that works out to ~$8,400.00 for each working person. Two income families would be double that.

Obviously this number will be higher based on reduced value of the dollar over time due to inflation and interest accrued on the loans the United States has taken out. My point is that IF repayment of this amount is spread over time it should not be too burdensome.

Someone should probably check my math.

$1,167,000,000,000.00/138,973,000 working individuals.

Source for employment numbers:
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.compaeu.txt

I used Total Nonfarm, All Employees, Not Seasonally Adjusted, Dec. 2007, in the As Revised table.

If interested, there are two websites regarding this subject that you may want to peruse.

http://www.deficitsdomatter.org
http://perotcharts.com/

From someone who is not an expert in the financial business, I have to ask a few questions:
1) Why on earth are these CEOs earning so much? Perhaps instead of laying people off, they could cut their own salaries in half? Logically, that should cut the expenditures of the company by several million dollars an hour… (and yes, you can find companies whose CEOs earn millions an hour) They should still be making plenty of money, so their cushy lifestyles would be unaffected.
2) Has anyone thought of limiting the amount CEOs can make? I don’t mean setting a dollar amount, even I realize that would be ridiculous. But what about limiting a CEOs salary to x% of the lowest paid workers salary, including the $ value of all benefits? That way if the CEO wants to earn more money, they have to pay their employees more money. And since everyone seems to be so insistent on giving people money, maybe this would be a way to do it? However, I have no idea how feasibl this actually is.
3) What exactly are the terms of the bailout? Are there any benchmarks? (Dumb question, but most news stations seem vague on this point) Or is this just a short term loan with absolutely no encouragement for the companies to restructure to prevent similar problems in the future?

No way!

No

No

No Bailout for the rich

All that was required was for the Feds to guarantee the loans and obligations of Lehman (Bear, Wachovia, etc) to the counterparty and let the firms fail.

I think that being the US capatalist as it is, the government should have had more foresight to keep the company and brand and sell it once markets improve. The losses and tax money will be spent anyway, so that would have at least made up for a piece of the huge cost.

What is alarming is that the Federal Government seems to have had no idea of the complexity of Lehman Bros obligations, nor the impact that its failure would have on the financial affairs of the world. Its quite one thing to express outrage at repetitive bailouts of the “rich” when one has so little knowlege of the stakes or the consequences. Clearly, we have crafted the ability to destroy ourselves with no less effectiveness than the mad scientist in his lab. Are we not pointing the finger in the wrong direction?

Look. The United States of America is the ONLY country in the industrialized World where are Corporate executives (the corporate/ university graduates pipeline – those unspoken words of when we all graduate we DESERVE to be compensated more than the Average American Worker !) That is how they control the worker, keep them poor and lord knows we need to keep them working for peanuts, while they the executives make on average 3500% more than there hourly employees. They can not keep pace with foreign corporations. These clowns should be ashamed they saw what was coming years ago!!! Now they want to be compensated for all those years of millions and millions of dollars of bonuses and perks. Screw them. Let them go broke.
I feel for the workers of America. We made these companies and corporations with the honest hardworking sweat of generations of families. Families that only wanted to provide for their families, put food on the table to fed there families and educate them as well. This makes me sick that those men MOST OF THEM WHITE, who FEEL THEY DESERVE every penny they make. Same with Bankers and Mortgage Corporations.
Hell, these folks just make millions and millions on the backs of the hard working.

Congress should have listened to the people, for once, prior to the first 700 Billion and said NO!

No Bailouts to anyone – period!

The corrections that followed would have been painful…… but quick!

Now we are truly doomed as the government has blurred the lines between private and socialized. Privatize the profits and socialize the losses – pure and simple.

This is the crown jewel in this administrations fleecing of America.

Talk about transfer of wealth……….

See you in line!

The only thing wrong, in my personal opinion, with Lehman going under is that it did not happen ten years ago. The FED, the Treasury, the SEC, and other Federal officials appeared to have learned little in the wake of LTCM’s collapse, about over leverage, derivatives, illiquid assets, and self serving disclosure requirements.

Paulson should definitely be fired because he chose. As the Treasury Secretary, he must be consistent when it came to policy and decision making. The bankruptcy of Lehman totally trashed credit rating system. When there is no standard to decide a creditworthy investment, the stock market is a casino and volatility will last forever.

Let us, for one moment, be completely truthful. For years, anyone who was not in financial services was treated as a poor, simple minded citizen to be ruled over by our powerful, know-it-all wealthy overlords. They knew how the game was played, how life was lived, how the economy and political systems should run, and we were their little pests.

Now, the veil has been ripped away. They knew little more than the guy next to them did…and it was all an act. Their number crunching wizardry was respectable, but when combined with a level of greed, selfishness, and lack of care and compassion for those affected by their business decisions, they have destroyed the lives and wealth of millions. Who is smiling now….who is happy now…now that their wealth has vanished, now that they are responsible for collapsing world economies, now that millions suffer because of their arrogance.

Can we as a society start valuing the very day person again, the hard working person in social services, the teacher, the police officer. Who really contributes to society? Now we know….let’s see if we act differently.

In short…NO…we should not be bailing out Lehman or any of these banks. Anytime government regulation of any type is suggested, whether it was in finance or universal health care, these know it alls said the free market should rule. Well, let’s give them what they want.

No handouts for you, just like you refused to give any to the rest of us.

May you all drop on your swords.

I don’t like bailouts anymore than anyone else, but the fact of the matter is, the cure is much worse than the disease. The government took a hard-lined stance with Lehman and Merril, because there was such a backlash of public apathy after the Bear Sterns bailout.

The simple fact of the matter is, there have been 1M+ jobs lost in our economy since Lehman went down and Merril was bought out. Imagine how many more jobs would have been lost if AIG, Fannie / Freddie, Citigroup, and the others had been allowed to fail.

The only reason these companies were saved is because of what happened in the markets after Lehman failed. Had all these comapnies been allowed to fail, we would be squarely in the middle of a depression with 25% or greater unemployment.

You may not like to the medicine that Paulson and Bernanke gave to the markets, but 10 years from now, everyone will realize that they saved the planet from financial destruction.

You really need to look at the real Lehman history before you start the sobs … from what I recall from friends in the industry, they have been bought, sold, acquired, etc – certainly not the pristine ancestry that your article seems to want us to see. Remember when it was Shearson Lehman Hutton? Someone needs to ask what the hell were they doing with their company back then? This situation has been years in the making and all you need to do is talk to those worker bees that were the casualties of Lehman’s history! I’ve met a few … they’re still alive & talking!

No, the government should not have bailed out Lehman Brothers nor any other private institution. It has been portrayed to the public as a “necessary” measure to avoid a complete financial collapse of our and the world’s economy. But, as I see it, the financial industry is getting a free pass at our expense (and potentially the big three automakers), a few “favored” firms have benefited significantly through forced consolidation, and the highly paid managers and CEOs still get to receive paychecks. A small pittance of the bailout, if any, will make its way to us serfs and commoners.

Our economy is hurting, our unemployment rate is up, our inflation adjusted wages are down, and consumers aren’t spending much money because they don’t have any more money to spend.

These bailouts are possible only by borrowing money. We will experience a huge degree of inflation as this scenario continues to play itself out. If you think the pain felt by the commoners is bad right now, just wait until double digit inflation hits.

So the question is, are the bailouts helping the problem or making matters worse in the long run? My vote is they’re making problems worse.

Bankruptcy laws are there for a reason. They should be used. The government should have bailed out neither Lehmen nor Bear Stearns.

The executive directors of Liman brothers should be made to account for every dime before the US government start talking about bailing them out or not. This is tax payers money and investment by different people. it suffice to say bail them out but who manages the bailout fund? what are the check and balance ptu in place? hope the gorverment is not keeping these same executives… for me I say bail them but pull the chains by bringing them to book.

With hindsight being 20/20 I don’t think anyone in their right mind could dispute that the government should have stepped in to oversee an orderly takeover or bankruptcy of Lehman. So much of the global financial markets are driven on perception (scary thought but true) and the catastrophic demise of a Wall St icon such as Lehman sent shockwaves that were overly amplified. This led directly to the burgeoning credit/financial melt-down in the ensuing weeks. Giving Lehman a “soft landing” or at least a protracted landing would have taken the shock and panic out of the mix and would have lessened the global fall out. At least that is my opinion. Shame on the feds!!

They deserved what they got. Lehman and Bear helped lead the disaster we’re in now. But, they needed to be saved to prevent the resulting financial mess we’re in now, kind of like saving your neighbor from foreclosure even though I’m current on my mortage. The results were bad for everyone left standing.

The execs of these firms should burn in hell.

Of course the Government should not have bailed out Lehman Bros. Nationalizing these companies is just as bad as letting them fail. Why should the American taxpayers be made to bail out the rich and greedy. These Wall Street banks and Firms made their own beds and they should lie in them. It makes me feel disgusted in the greedy business practices that have brought us to this point. Our financial system is a mess, our job market is falling apart and these CEO’s and leaders are walking away with golden parachutes financed on the backs of hardworking american people. “Ashes, ashes, we ALL fall down!!”

No Bail out,
what I don’t understand is this: those that are in a position of corporate and government power are said to be the best and brightest our elite educational institutions can offer. If so why are we in such a mess? Oh yeah ..greed.
Well we will get through this mess , the taxpayer will suffer , the boys club will get richer,and in 10 years or so some elite good ole boys club punks will do it all over again. humanity is doomed to repeat the past, will we ever learn?
no bail out

NO, OUR GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT HAVE HELPED LEHMAN AND EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THE BAILOUT OF LEHMAN SHOULD BE PROSECUTED FOR INSIDER TRADING.

Should the gov’t have bailed out Lehman? Yes
I lost $175000 in Lehman bonds. Money that was in my IRA. After Lehman fiailed, everyone admitted it was a mistake. So where does that leave the bond holders today? We were an experiment it seems.

If the financial system is based on trust and confidence, then the confidence artists will worm their way in to gain your trust.”)

The weasels of Wall Street expected the government to bail them out. They knew that the “regulators” had studied the history of the Great Depression, and so the weasels gamed the financial system expecting the Federal Government would try to provide “liquidity” (really, cheap loans to gamblers).

It is a sucker job all the way.

President FDR did not provide any liquidity in his time – the only way to get rid of the weasels is to never give them more money.

The complex investments – or innnovative investments – were really abusive contracts. The weasels know the court system will not terminate the contracts, that’s why they hounded for years to “deregulate” because the laws did not allow such contracts.

The press keeps mentioning one term – transparency. Whatever happened to the term “full disclosure” as it applies to the contents of the contracts?

And another term “too big to fail” keeps appearing – where is the term “too big for their britches” ?

And finally, where is former Senator Phil Gramm with his ivory-tower-professor attitudes and comments? Those regulations were there for a reason. And it seems to me that Newt Gringich’s “Contract With America” has turned out to be a “Contract On America”.

Somehow, we of the muddle class will get through this one.

Is this a free market or not. Why not give me a 65 billion and see what I can do with it? My books are in better shape!

I Give The Human Race Less Than 100 years .. Hopefully the next Species won’t be Too Greedy and Insecure

If all it did was contribute to the amount of money that ultimately goes “poof in the night” [the latter I believe is the technically correct phrase to use]; then the decision to bail out Lehman was incorrect and the money that went poof should have been spent on infrastructure projects that would have at least left infrastructure behind… instead of just the “poof.” Throwing money at “state managed” economic concerns is what caused the failure of Soviet Union communism, not that their ex-KGB, economic adventurers’, Putin-led crime-ocracy is so terrific: so maybe a return to common sense capitalism might be called for; minus, of course, any ongoing, criminal racketeering enter-prize [sic] of pork barrel spending related to voting for legislation in exchange for campaign contributions, if such is occurring in the Senate and/or Congress. [Imagine: a single instance, 185 BILLION dollar plundering of pork. What unbelievable arrogance!!!]

I am sick and tired of bailing out the rich. Maybe if rich new what a hard days work was all about the economy would not be so bad.

We have been forcing working people to take wage and benefit cuts ever since the disaster commonly called the Reagan administration. We have moved manufacturing overseas. We cannot maintain a healthy economy when the greatest rewards go to people who just move money from one pocket to the other. Financial capitalists are the flea on the tail wagging the dog and they are dragging us all down. NONE of them should have been bailed out.

The US Government should simply have recapitalized/nationalized Lehman, by buying its shares at the then actual price. That would have facilitated an orderly breakup and subsequent selling of assets. It would have prevented the credit seizure. This whole affair is symptomatic as a breakdown of US government first ignoring its responsibilities with respect to oversight and subsequently even denying its responsibility with respect to preventing systematic risk. Damn those ideological fundamentalist with their creative destruction. That stance is simply not applicable/acceptable at this level.

NO!! And putting the “bad guys” that caused this mess in jail is not going to help a thing. The common tax payer will still be paying the bill….and so will our grandchildren. Let’s not give them a free ride, in jail.

If you are going to bail out one, you need to bail them all out. What happens to my bonds I had with Lehman brothers?

When history is written I think we will realize that the failure was in saving Bear Stern, not letting Lehman go. Now we are in the mode of saving everyone which will result in saving nobody.

I believe there is something called “fiduciary responsibility.” If what all those fat cats did was not a crime it certainly was failure to fulfill their responsibilities. They all should be not only fired, but so heavily fined that they feel some of the suffering they have caused. (I really feel like saying “lynch ‘em.”)

Absolutely. Having the Government bail out anyone goes against the free enterprise system which is what this country was founded on. Granted if a company or bank goes under, many people will loose their jobs and money, but this is a temporary situation. As with any free enterprise, new companies and banking systems with new brains and ideas behind them will rise to replace those companies and banks and new employment will emerge from it. People knew when they put money in these banks that they were only insured for $100,000. The Government did what it should have when it increased the FDIC to $200,000. That is all they should have done.

absolutely .. while the consequences have been brutal … do you think this excessive fruad taht was going on in the garb of great business could have put under the carpet … and business would get back to normalcy.. I personally this would have come out of the closet … earlier the better ….

The question whether government should’ve bailed out Lehman is moot. Had Paulson committed to a bail out he would’ve been grilled by congress and public, and in any case would only delay the inevitable. Merrill, WaMu, Wachovia, AIG, Freddie, Fanny, and Citi would’ve continued their downward spirl regardless. At some point, government will decided it can no longer afford to bail out one of these failing institutions and same shock would’ve hit Wall Street.

No, the government should not. Why should the government bailot Lehmen when it won,t bailout the big three. It looks like these mega financial corporations, with the help of Paulson, are still shuffling commercial paper and taxpayers money until they get what they want for their Swiss Bank accounts. What a mess.

The government did the right thing when it let Lehman fail. The government’s mistake was bailing out all the other financial institutions and AIG. They all participated in the fraudulent derivatives market reaping the rewards when times were good, but not shouldering the risk and resulting losses when their investments soured. Millions of Americans are paying the price for the risks of a few. Privatized gains and socialized losses. This is not capitalism. This is not American. No more bailouts.

The decision to kill off Lehman was a politically motivated economic crime committed by the Bush administration and its Treasury with the intent of “payback” to an institution that was viewed as “too Democratic” vs. “properly Republican”. The decision was intended as well to enhance the position and reputation of Goldman at the expense of other investment banks that held large positions with Lehman, to say nothing of ridding the banking business of an annoying competitor. Any analysis that does not consider the motives of the participants is missing what really happened.

That said, Fuld’s actions in the year or more before the failure, and the failure of Lehman’s board to remove Fuld long after his incompetence was visible to everyone in the firm, were also criminally irresponsible.

Fuld’s duties were to Lehman customers, employees, and investors. His failure to serve any of these parties was obvious for more than a year before the collapse.

Paulson and Bush, on the other hand, had a duty to the Nation (if not the world) that they ignored by letting personal and political vendettas trump their responsibility to understand the consequences of their actions and protect, rather than destroy a major part of the world economic system out of simple spite.

Why let Lehman fail and save the rest of them? Makes no sense.

If management was doing their job and not concerned with their prosperity, this would never have happened.
Hindsite is always 20/20.

Saving the banks was the absolute wrong thing to do. All it ended up doing is saving a bunch of big wigs jobs. As time has shown it has not affected ‘main street’ either way. There were enough small and local banks that could have kept going with out the waste of taxpayer money. It is or was a capitalist society and that would have been the price that the idiots running those companies would have had to pay for their faulty decisions! As it is wallstreet will go back to business as usual despite what the politicians say. If you look at how many companies are still around from the turn of the century there are less than a dozen. It is the natural way that things in this society are supposed to work. It was a bad thing and the repurcussions are going to be showing up for years down the road and we the basic taxpayer are going to continue to pay the cost of their incompetence!!

It seems at this point that all the
cards are on the table. That is, there
are no hidden troubled assets anywhere.
(I hope)

The Lehman Bros failure has just meant that the process has ocurred sooner.
A bailout would just have slowed the
revelation of TA’s making the “Tsunami”
even more pernicious.

it doesnt matter, US is bankrupt anyway

how do these companies let it get to the point that they’ll need a cash injection in a couple days to continue operating? shouldn’t they have seen it coming much much sooner in advance than that? isn’t that what all those overpaid execs are supposed to do for their wage?

When a person balances at the edge of a cliff and then slips, a witness has to make an instant decision. Either the witness stands there self-righteously and lectures the fool while the slippage continues towards oblivion or the witness heroically grabs and pulls the fool to safety. Well, our government, based on the principles of “compassionate conservatism” chose to lecture and allow Lehman Bros. to slip into oblivion, and, thereby, drop the rest of the world’s economy towards the cliff’s bottom. It makes one wonder if the government leaders ever understood what “compassionate conservatism” actually means.

Anytime any industry is faced with a total shutdown, federal or state government needs to offer some assistance to keep the industry from collapsing. The only thing I find at fault with the “bailout” is that there is no oversight of any kind. We are leaving it up to the industry that could not police itself to police itself. Such assumptions that they will “do the right thing” are not only naive but seeing how the economy has continued to slide, obviously false.

No. Enough. Time for America to grow up. One plus one = 2, not 3. Period.

i think that the government erred in not letting bear go under initially. had they done so, leh, aig, et al would have realized that there would be no ‘bailout’ and that they would need to act expeditiously to save themselves…even if that meant a forced liquidation or fire sale, either would have been preferable to bankruptcy.

moreover, the action that the government has taken since then – injecting capital – does little to nothing to get lending started again. lending is based on trust. no trust exists because there is no transparency as required by regulatory statutes, boards, laws, etc. all institutions realize that there counterparties engage in the same practices they do, hence, they have no idea what their real financial position is. it is time to do away with concepts like ‘off-balance-sheet’ anything, phantom income, ‘non-gaap’, etc. the creation of these financial engineering techniques sap brain power and take away from the productive use or resources.

i fear that until the system is cleaned up, it is doomed to repeat it’s mistakes of the past.

The government should have taken Lehman and dissolved it. liqudating there assets, by crediting all the mortgage loans to the public. Meanwhile inserting the 700 billions to the consumer. Or a big portion of it. The example would have been devistating to other large firms in the stock markets. Consumer spending confedence is the most important part of the economy. There a saying in my country. If the donkey is at fault why beet the saddle. Our politicians have done just that.

The government should have given every taxpayer $30,000 instead of a mere $600. Then everyone could have paid off some debt, instead of throwing it at the banks only to see it go into a black hole, never to be seen again. There’s always plenty to bail out the rich guys, but never anything for us poor buggers, except a kick in the behind. To hell with globalism. It’s made the world harder for the little guy. We should have let all the banks fail for cooking up such wicked schemes.

I thought that this was capitalism. You make mistakes, you pay for them. But it increasingly looks like the Government has another idea: you still live in a luxury if your business is just too well-connected to fail. And the population (oh, well, perhaps 95% of it) will pay for it. It is called “socialism”, is it not?

It was big mistake to let Lehman fail. Because this caused confidence crisis, which have threatened to start the fall of global finance system like domino. Taxpayers will pay now much more in bailouts, than they would pay in case of saving Lehman.
I see it as proof of US Congress economical incopetence, because they are always caring more about votes, than about possibility o total collapse of US and global economy.

Not saving Lehman was penny-smart, but pound-foolish. They did not deserve to be saved, but not saving them resulted in much, much more damage to Wall Street and Main Street.

The financial world was looking at the moon as an ever growing baloon. In the meanwhile they did not feel they were all loosing their pants; Lehman Brothers were just unlucky that somebody noticed.

I was initially outraged by the bailout until I realized it’s just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

They should have let them all fail and then broken up the pieces into banks small enough and transparent enough that they could be allowed to prosper or fail on their own. Economy of scale is an illusion beyond a certain size.

Paulson’s and Bermake’s job is to monitor. They have legal power to have access to companies financials. They must have known better. That’s their job that they did very badly. They should have saved Lehman’s. That was an strategic mistake.

Barclays wanted Lehman in a bad way. Lehman had some assets like investment banking and commodity trading. The bad real estate debt was the cross that Barclays would not tolerate. If the Federal Reserve had guranateed the debt as they did with Bear Stearns, Lehman would have been sold at a price rather than given away in Bankruptcy.

Paulson wanted to send a message that the Treasury was not in the business of bailouts, but AIG changed that a week later.

Confidence was eroded when the government let Lehman go down. Lehman management could have sold during the summer of 2008, but the precedent was set when the government helped Bear Stears.

The fallout in investor confidence has been much worse than 30 billion of debt guarantee. This was a major mistake.

Hindsight being 20/20 the argument now would be that had Lehman been saved, the fallout for the rest of the industry might have been less drastic. However; nothing would have prevented the current recession, there was, and still is, simply too much debt. The true issue is the federal reserve, treasury and other key players not understanding how mortgage backed securities worked and more importantly, the dangers of them. Which is truely the problem.

My thoughts are it is simply too late to prevent the bottom from falling out, it’s falling out already. So they need to be proactive and prepare for the next wave, which will be CONSUMER CREDIT. You cannot spur spending when the bulk of the American people have credit scores that are horrible. The economy is going to contract to a sustainable size and there is no avoiding it, but if we don’t address the issue of damaged consumer credit, banks will not begin to seriously loan money until WELL AFTER 2012.

If they are not going to save the big three than they should let them all fail. You cannot pick and choose you must be fair.

Yes the government did the right thing

SOCIALISM AT ITS BEST!!

no company should ever be bailed out for digging their own hole, let them falter and die as they deserve.

During that weekend, and throughout the following Monday, I thought it prudent to let Lehman to go under. It was time not to facilitate moral hazard tendencies, and certainly in the months since Bears Stern, the players had figured out how to handle a bankruptcy by a large financial. Whithin 48 hours, I knew I was wrong and that the authorities were wrong to let Lehman go under. Clearly, the markets have been driven by fear that anyone can go under now, and almost no investment is safe enough. The resulting loss in equity wealth has led us into a recession.

No way- we should never have saved AIG, either. Hopefully we won’t save GM or any other mis-managed company, but I fear I am wrong. These ‘handouts’ are a national disgrace.

Congress made a grave error in approving the money for the banks. It was a gun to the head moment by the administration just like going to Iraq.

The government is about to compound the error by giving money to the auto companies.

THe rich complain giving welfare payments of small amounts to the poor. OH but they have spent (investors) money on big houses and fancy vacations thats okay. Their business fails because of greed and mismanagement they wnat RICH PEOPLES WELFARE. LET THEM FAIL FROM THEIR MISTAKES. The small business does not get bailed out they get shut down.

NO NO NO! Without the threat of failure as a possibility in business as well as life people may make poor decisions without consequences. The painful lessons that are learned in life are the ones we remember best. The tax payer should not be required to pick up the tab.

The Federal Reserve is running a multi trillium $ Ponzi scheme. Why not wrap the Lehman gang into it also?
I’ll tell you why!
All Ponzi schemes end up with a bust.
This one will too.

I believe they would have saved Lehman if it was not for political reasons. They needed someone to die to convince the congress that bailout was the only way out. If they saved Lehman, congress would grill them. Lehman was just a scapegoat. After witnessing what happened after Lehman fell, no one questioned what they did to AIG or other firms.

The question shouldn’t be “should we have saved them” but what would be different today if we did? What have we learned and can we use that knowledge now and in the future to help ourselves?

The problem is the policy inconsistency. If government saved everyone else, why not Lehman? They saved AIG 2 days after letting Lehman fall. That didn’t make any sense.

We live in crazy times, to say the least. Let them go under or not…? If we don’t restructure our moral basis… we’ll go to the dogs,for sure. So, let them go under.

Yes the government did the right thing by letting Lehman fail. But the government did the wrong thing by selectively bailing out other financial institutions. The government should not have interfered w/ the free market, and they were not suppose to react to Wall Street according to Greenspan. The purpose of the government is to provide checks-and-balances, not checks-and-balances-and bailouts. They should have just stepped back and let it all fail. If they were going to step in, the Feds should have used all 700 billion to work directly w/ the consumers to stop the bleeding. This way, it is fair to both the struggling homeowners and soon-to-be struggling homeowners once the layoffs hit harder. Why didn’t they do it? Probably because then it might have been considered a monopoly, or maybe because the Feds don’t have enough resources to manage the consumers and all their assets. I’m sure w/ the 700 billion, the Feds could have created the resources to manage these assets. They should have renamed TARP to CRAP. The funny thing about these failed financial institutions, I could have failed these institution for free. I’m sure my kids could have done the same also. They need to go back to basics and do w/o the complex investments driven by greed.

Saving the banks was a mistake. Let them fail and allow healthy banks to take them over. Industries and consumers affected by the financial crisis do deserve help.

The U.S.A has 10 billion $ to spend on Iraq every month, but they couldn’t put up the $ to save Lehman? It’s bewildering that they would let the financial system and our economy hit a wall, rather than put up the money to save Lehman. The consequences of Paulson’s decision will be felt by the American people for years if not decades. It’s amazing to me, how just a handful of people, be it in the private or public sector can destroy the lives of millions and millions of people, and not be held accountable.

All of the bankrupt players in who took part in the amazingly fraudulent derivatives market should have been allowed to fail! Bailouts prolong the agony and socialize the pain rather than allowing it to fall on those responsible for the debacle. Paulson and Bernake have set the stage for a devastating inflation down the road.

The government has absolutely no business stepping in and saving anything. They should have let the entire thing collapse. Then we would all know just how evil and corrupt the Wall Streeters and their fancy suits are. And we would all be smarter for it.

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.

Lehman should’ve been allowed to fail and their executives should’ve been investigated and prosecuted for fraud. They knew the quality of the mortgates they were packaging into MBS. I read an article somewhere at the beginning of the mortgate mess that said “Be prepared to hear the word GREED alot in the near future. Why? Because GREED isn’t illegal.” How convenient.

What really is funny about this entire thing is it was mandated by the government. Barney Frank and his ilk set the rules, the bankers showed their greed by taking advantage of these naive rules. Now Barney and friends are going to legislate us back out of the hole they got us into, talk about naive thinking. First they should put all the politicians and financial people responsible in jail and let the market sort out the rest, it may hurt by good medicine usually tastes bad.

There was no reason to let Lehman collapse, siting investors taking risk should pay for their mistake. Why was Bear Sterns saved? You can’t afford to allow a major financial institution to collapse, which will have telling consequences on the economy particularly when the defects in highly unregulated financail market is are comint to the fore. This looked more like a single person’s decision.

What does not kill me makes me stronger! Let them all fail, chips fall where they may. This is a long overdue housecleaning caused by cupidity and avarice.

It certainly set of a whirlwind of events which almost immediately started a run on the money market funds of the supposedly ultra-conservative Reserve Funds when they ‘broke the buck’ by marking their Lehman paper to 0. The redemptions were so ferocious that the Reserve suspended all redemptions. Many of us in the Reserve Yield Plus (RYPQX) and Primary fund still have our assets frozen (3 months now). In the case of RYPQX we haven’t seen a dime.

There never should have been this market place in the first place

When will the world eventually figure this whole scam and sham out,When someone says they made a killing on the market exactly what did the do. They manipulated the market took from the less informed and generated a personal windfall.
This reminds me of the fish problem in Newfoundland, the fishermen kept recording record catches getting very rich until they eventually took so much, they depleted everything till the fish “stocks” eventually collapsed and people lost their lively hoods.

And of course add to this “Republician” policy to deregulate and let the fox police the hen house and what do you get.

You guys down there (USA) are so gullible and looking in from the outside it appears the “stock Market” is in your DNA on the quest for a “fast buck”.

All this reminds me of the search for perpetual motion but alas not nothing ever comes from nothing

Keeping in mind most people “play” the market and some times you lose the game, unfortunately the better players usually win.

History will tell us if Lehman should have been saved. But, taking a close look at the circumstances the government moved too quickly to close them down. Looking back, it was a bad move, but at the time more understanding of the situation would have calmed the markets.

The Banks created their own problems by making mortgages with no money down and no checking of Income. Wall street then bought these Mortgages from the Bank’s and sold them as “Funds” thus further compounding the problem. All of this was Criminal and should never have been allowed….but lot’s of middle men go rich doint it….at our expense.

Yes – if the government can save every other firm on Wall Street, why not Lehman – doesn’t make sense.

No way…our government is has destroyed capitalism with this form of corporate welfare. In addition to all that, the private “Federal Reserve” must be abolished to allow for truly free capital markets.

I still can’t believe that the government has saved everyone BUT Lehman Brothers! As a former employee, we lost thousands of dollars in stock gone up in smoke. This has been a major direct hit to our savings. As a result, we’ve stopped hiring domestic help–no one to help with cleaning for our family of five, no pedicures, no one to string up the lights for the holidays. No eating out. What will the people in those industries give up as a result? You might say this doesn’t affect you, because you weren’t working at an investment bank, but it does. You need to start asking yourself: Which domino am I?

The problem was brought on by greed and the fact that our elected leaders were not paying attention, as they are paid to do. My 401K has been devalued by over 50% (well over 6 figures, as well as many, many, many more hard working americans. It’s unfortunate that some of the bastard’s that caused and let this happen aren’t either in jail or on their way. The average person does not understand high finance, but understands who should have been watching. Sould Lehman have been saved, ask my 401K.

Absolutely not. Lehman wasn’t a victim of the subprime mess, they helped to create it in a big way. They didn’t just bundle Subprime stocks to sell to investors, they created the investment bundles first then pressured mortage companies to write mortgages so they could fill the investment bundle they already wrote. Greed and Incompentence ruled at Lehman. It’s easy to say if Lehman was bailed out, the market wouldn’t have crashed. but there’s only so much crap you can sweep under the rug before someone trips on it. Sooner or later the same exact thing would have happened anyway. Better to start with the guys that contributed the most to the current mess.

No.

The banking industry has gotten themselves into this mess by being to greedy and making too many high risk loans. Let the weak die or be bought out and the strong will survive. The industry as a whole will be stronger for it.

No, they shouldn’t have been saved – but then neither should FM/FM, AIG, and the others. The TARP monies LEGALLY are for “financial firms” only. GM nor any of the auto manufacturers qualify. As JOURNALISTS why hasn’t CNN reported this fact? Do facts get in the way of good, honest journalism nowadays?

These are the same people that were at the helm from the beginning and they are the ones in charge of fixing it?

Why not put the people that turned on the warning sirens in charge?

The issue is no longer “should” or should not”. The verdict is already on wall. The real issue is how to prevent from such historic policy failure again in the future. We had great depression before. We had finanicial turmoil before. Why aren’t we still prepared for this and other “expected financial behavior? We have to ask: what kind of qualification should we look for when we choose financial policy leaders? It is almost certain how historians are going to describe Paulson and Greenspan in this historic episode.

I am not sure if saving it would have prevented what has happened since. But the question to be answered is, How did the managers of LB, a firm with a tradition of more than 100 years, that used to be seen as an icon of world finance make some of the investments it did, and leverage itself to the degree it did? What was done was really a betrayel of the trust of generations of former partners, for the trade-off of salary one-bettermans-ship.

I think Hank Paulson did exactly the right thing: let the problem plays out in a true free-market way. Any action would cover up and prolong the problem.

At issue here is the murky nature of the financial section that the true transparency is hard to come by and so the capitalism doesn’t really work. SEC should address the problem, not Federal Reserve or anyone else.

Yes, the market has lost a lot of money and people’s life have been changed by that, but that’s just paper profit, not real money.

Wall street is supposed to be greedy, so SEC and politicians that make financial policies are at fault. I really hope people can get over emotion and see the root cause of all this.

Paulson will go down as the worst Treasury Secretary in history. Not just for his role in Lehman but for the management of TARP, etc. The BIG question is where was our new Sec of the Treasury in all this? Doesn’t sound from what I have read so far that he truly understood the consequences or pushed for saving Lehman based on the greater good of the system. I wonder if he has the chops to do the job he has been appointed to.

The unique exclusion of Lehman from the bailouts that preceeded and followed conveyed an unspoken yet pervasive sense of randomness that spoke poorly of government and sent absolutely the wrong message to an extremely nervous public.

While I like many am disgusted at the thought of rescuing the very people who have taken our economy to the precipice of ruin, the sytemic risk of not throwing Lehman a lifeline were far too great, as events have proven. Unfortunately, saving the banks are a little like giving oats to the horse in order to feed the birds. But it must be done. Hold your nose and write the checks.

Peter del Vecchio, Houston, TX

the so call wise men was so stupid to allow Lehmans Bros to go under, They forgot that thr reputation of this nation was at stake, Not so much for the dollars, Lehmans was insured against losses only to find that the ones that cover ,faulted on their responsibility

At first I thought Lehman should have been saved, but after listening to Fuld’s arrogance and incompetence at the hearings, I know now that the right decision was to let Lehman fail. Lehman needs to face the consequences for their actions. First the Koreans walked about. Second the government brought all the players to the table to help foster a takeover. Lehman was such a disaster that nobody wanted it. You should never throw good money after bad.

No bailouts for anyone. Let those who make poor decision reap the consequences of their decisions. I don’t believe our economic problems would be any better off had we helped Lehman and I think we are much worse off by bailing out all of these others who do not deserve it.

NO. Bankrupt for-profit enterprises should NOT be saved with tax-payers’ dollars, same for GM and the other automakers, etc. The saying is something like this: “as GM goes, so goes America”. This is so true! Both the automakers AND the USA are totally bankrupt and under hopeless amounts of debt that can and will NEVER be repaid, and all, including the USA, (sadly) will ultimately fail. The average American is simply TOO STUPID to realize this and will suffer huge losses as the once-mighty and once gold-backed dollar fails along with our once-great country. Our leaders have failed to follow the requirements of the US Constition with respect to sound money and we now can now clearly see exactly why only gold and silver are to used as money and NOT debt. Our Founding Fathers were no dummies – they studied and understood history very clearly and they knew this to be proven to be true againa and again throughout history. We have allowed our leaders to reverse this most critical requirement over the past 70-80 years and we are now doomed as a country as a direct result of our leaders’ actions and our permitting them to do this. Very, very sad. Thank God my Grandparets are not here to see this…

Anyone who has any knowledge of finance and financial derivatives would certainly have known the magnitude.

SO WITH NO DOUBT YES THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN SAVED – BECAUSE MAYBE THE 700 BILLION IN TARP WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN NECESSARY TO THEREFORE STABILIZE THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM. Then the 2nd tier impact of the credit freeze resulting would not have the auto industry in peril right now. Yes auto mgt have made mistakes but what is going on now is a DIRECT result of the credit freeze and lehman demise. Anyone with knowledge of credit distress knows this.

Yes, but without equity for the shareholders and dismissal for the greedy schmuck management team. Arrogance and incompetence often go hand in hand!

Capitalism??? where is it? America has become a socialist state! Let em fail and anyone who’s left standing will be better for it!

None of the businesses should be bailed out and the financial tailspin into the abyss isn’t a result of Lehman collapsing, but the result of greedy wrong decision making by a select few that made millions if not billions for themselves in the process. Let the CEOS of the financial institutions that made hundreds of millions over the past decade all chip in and bail out Wall Street and the oil companies with their record profits bail out the car industry.

Yes, Lehman should have been rescued. When it was not it established there was no objective way to determine if others would be rescued and established a huge range of uncertainty. It changed the behavior of others who now were not certain they would be rescued, and thus hoarded assets. Lehman was let go down the drain because they had been perceived as not being a team player when they refused to voluntarily join in an earlier rescue effort. Beneath the surface all these lofty institutions are run on the politics of a bunch of fickle kindergartners. ‘Jerry won’t pledge 20 Billion,’ has simply replaced ‘Ron won’t share his apple,’ as a reason to snub him.

The Lehman bubble should never have happened. What are we doing to address that? Throw money at the problem with no oversight. Hmmm, can you say another bubble.

When you have reactive/disaster mangement happening all the time either the management is incompetent or Machavallian.

The government had an opptinity to do the right thing. They could have stopped this from happening. I believe they allowed this because this was an election year and they needed something to stop another four years of a Bush wannabe.

In hindsight, yes — it may have made the next few weeks a little more managable. Giving public money to these entities is distasteful, but it should have been done with strings well attached. One of the strings for all of these ‘bail-outs’ should have been holding the demi-gods of Wall Street accountable. We’re having to pour money down rat-holes and the people still spending it are the people who’s unadulterated greed and stupidity put us here — and we seem to have no choice.

The government did the right thing, and should have treated Citi and the others the same way. A true capitalist system requires the failure of mismanaged institutions. It is a travesty that in a recession, the taxpayer is now funding Wall Streeters’ Manhattan lifestyle because aside from Lehman, the financial sector is receiving special treatment from the government. Treat them same as the autoworkers, and protect the taxpayers and depositors instead.

No

If the US government had save Lehman, we would have probably avoided the crisis of confidence.

No, I do not think the government should have let Lehman Brothers fail. My 87 year old mother lost almost all her $10,000 investment. Had Lehman been given a little time, they could have worked their way out of this mess and prevented bankruptcy. Besides, it was unfair that the government picked and chose who they would bailout. Much of the mess our economy is in now could have been prevented by helping Lehman Brothers.

The government should have helped Lehman Brothers! It wasn’t a matter to think about twice (unlike the Big 4 Crisis)! Lehman was a big loss to our great nation and we have made a huge mistake in not saving them!