Critic
Ten Years After Lehman Bankruptcy, New Books Point Finger at Two Men
Which financial crisis book should you read?
Illustration: Molly Fairhurst
In 2008, Federal Reserve officials gave many reasons why they were unable to save Lehman Brothers—the bank’s collateral was inadequate, they lacked legal authority—but the result wiped out an institution with $619 billion in assets, the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history. In this book, Laurence M. Ball, an economist at Johns Hopkins University, seeks to discover why it was singled out to fail.
Number to know: Ball determines that an $84 billion loan—$1 billion less than went to AIG—would have kept Lehman solvent for months.