Crocodilian

The Lehman Debacle

Gotta disagree with "With hindsight, I still think that a cobbled-together deal between Barclays, Lehman, Treasury, the Fed, the FSA, the Bank of England, and the British Treasury would have been a much better option to what eventually transpired."

The system needed the reality that certain kinds of activities themselves threatened system extinction. By papering over those risks, as occurred at LTCM, the necessary incentive would not have existed.

A "cobbled together deal" is what we've had plenty of: Bear Stearns, Countrywide Financial, the entire Japanese financial system since oh, 1991 . . .

Getting "back to business" must mean taking our losses, and going forward with a healthy fear of sloppy finance. The Lehman failure serves both those purposes.