Today’s financial malaise for pension funds, state and local budgets and underemployment is largely a result of the 2008 bailout, not the crash. What was saved was not only the banks – or more to the point, as Sheila Bair pointed out, their bondholders – but the financial overhead that continues to burden today’s economy....
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What the Media Didn't Tell You About the Fall of Lehman Bros.
The Lehman Brothers default on September 15, 2008, was the biggest incident of financial terrorism in US history. When Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke convened an emergency meeting with leading members the US Congress and their aides on September 18, 2008, they had already developed a “break the glass”...
Read MoreLessons Unlearned
Fear gripped Wall Street on the morning of September 15, 2008, as investment giant Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following weeks of stock market losses and the steady downgrading of its assets. Traders hoped that the century-old warhorse would be saved in an 11th hour reprieve. But when last minute...
Read MoreWilliam Black Charges "Massive, Fraudulent Transactions"
Prof. William Black submitted a 24-page report on the Lehman bankruptcy to the House Committee on Financial Services on Tuesday. It is the best analysis of the underlying causes of the financial crisis to date. Black, who is a former government regulator and white-collar criminologist, shows that the crisis was not an unavoidable disaster, as...
Read MoreGeithner and Bernanke's Possibly Criminal Roles
After a year-long investigation, court-appointed bank examiner Anton Valukas has produced a deadly 2,200 page report which details the activities that led to the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. The report is a keg of dynamite. The question now is whether anyone in government has the nerve to light the fuse. Valukas provides powerful evidence that Lehman...
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