The Fed and Lehman Brothers, Laurence M. Ball
The Fed and Lehman Brothers, Laurence M. Ball
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The Fed and Lehman Brothers
Setting the Record Straight on a Financial Disaster

Author: Laurence M. Ball

Narrator: David Colacci

Unabridged: 9 hr 11 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/31/2020

Synopsis

The bankruptcy of the investment bank Lehman Brothers was the pivotal event of the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed. Ever since the bankruptcy, there has been heated debate about why the Federal Reserve did not rescue Lehman in the same way it rescued other financial institutions, such as Bear Stearns and AIG. The Fed's leaders from that time, especially former Chairman Ben Bernanke, have strongly asserted that they lacked the legal authority to save Lehman because it did not have adequate collateral for the loan it needed to survive. Based on a meticulous four-year study of the Lehman case, The Fed and Lehman Brothers debunks the official narrative of the crisis. It shows that in reality, the Fed could have rescued Lehman but officials chose not to because of political pressures and because they underestimated the damage that the bankruptcy would do to the economy. The compelling story of the Lehman collapse will interest anyone who cares about what caused the financial crisis, whether the leaders of the Federal Reserve have given accurate accounts of their actions, and how the Fed can prevent future financial disasters.

About Laurence M. Ball

Laurence M. Ball is professor of economics at The Johns Hopkins University. He has previously worked as a Visiting Scholar at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, foreign central banks including the Bank of England and Bank of Japan, and at the International Monetary Fund. His current research topics include the long-term damage from the Great Recession and the case for raising central banks' inflation targets to four percent.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Frank on January 16, 2019

This book should more or less settle the case about why Lehman Brothers failed. Ball proves that Lehman Brothers's fundamentals and assets were strong, that it was probably solvent or close to it, that it just suffered a short-run liquidity run, and that the Federal Reserve could have saved it. Yet......more

Goodreads review by Ksensei on July 03, 2018

The recent financial crisis is a hobbyhorse of mine, I seem to be unable to stop reading about it. Luckily, some seem to be unable to stop writing about it, this book being released a decade (holy shit, has it been that long?) after the events in question took place. “The Fed and Lehman Brothers” pre......more

Goodreads review by Michael on July 09, 2018

Economist Laurence M. Ball re-examines the evidence of the choices facing the managers of the 2008 financial crisis. In particular he looks at a crucial choice – to let the storied Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers fail in bankruptcy rather than offer taxpayer support for a bailout. His conclusion: th......more

Goodreads review by Jagordo on November 09, 2020

This book reads more like a doctoral thesis than it does a pop-finance piece (read: dry but content dense), but it does well in its mission. Be prepared for repeated bits of dialog as Ball emphasizes his case on what happened in this absolute clusterfuck of months in '08.......more

Goodreads review by Jim on September 04, 2018

Prof. Ball investigates why the Fed let Lehman Bros fail in Sept. 2008. At the time of the failure, the protagonists (Paulson, Bernanke, and Geithner) seemed to conclude that as a matter of policy they wouldn't rescue Lehman. Paulson had earned a reputation as Mr Bailout because of Bear Sterns, Fred......more

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