Lehman Brothers

Lehman was forced into bankruptcy not because it neglected to act responsibly."

There was "nothing, nothing" in Lehman's books that signaled it might go bankrupt.

We did have too much in commercial real estate (around $50 billion). We brought that down to $30 billion."

No, really, there was nothing wrong with Lehman's books. Lehman did not need a bailout. It needed liquidity. "I understand all the noise about crisis and bailout and failure and whatever. Lehman needed liquidity," he said at one point.

And later: “There was no capital hole. Lehman had the capital. We needed the liquidity."

And again: "The terms that ended up being used were "crisis" and "bailout." Had the Fed provided liquidity to Lehman Brothers, those terms could have been avoided."