Lehman Weekend

Two years ago, on Friday Sept 12, 2008, the Lehman Weekend began. Many people are still trying to figure out why the bailout of Lehman was aborted or what would have happened if there were a special bankruptcy chapter for such financial institutions. Books have been written about the Weekend including Sorkin’s Too Big To Fail and more will be written. The Dodd-Frank bill’s requirement for a Fed audit will reveal more. In my view one of the most informative writings is the Lehman Bankruptcy Examiner’s report, based on extensive interviews and examination of documents. The whole report is quite long (thousands of pages), so I thought it would be useful to prepare this excerpt which focuses only on the events of that weekend.