Lehman’s “Not So Big” $600,000,000,000(!) Balance Sheet
“The 2008 financial crisis itself was centered not on big banks but on “shadow banks” like Lehman Brothers that weren’t necessarily that big.”
–Paul Krugman, “Sanders Over the Edge”; The NYT (4/8/2016)
No matter what you think of big banks or who caused The 2008 Crash, I think most people — excluding those on Wall Street and in Washington, and the pundits 
who write about them — can agree that an institution with over $600 billion in assets is, well, pretty big.
In fact, Lehman Brothers was (and is) by far the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, and was at the heart of the September, 2008 melt-down that ushered in such now-familiar terms as TARP, ZIRP, and Quantitative Easing (brought to you courtesy of The Federal Reserve).
Bernie Sanders may have stumbled recently over the “how” of breaking up the Too-Big-to-Fail Banks.
But, when even left-of-center Nobel economists like Krugman become inured to exactly how big really is big . . . the “why” couldn’t be clearer.
See also, “Wall Street Plunders Henhouse, Blames Chickens”; “It Depends on What the Definition of ‘If’ Is: a Clintonesque Parsing of Hillary’s, “I am willing to break up the big banks, if they need to be broken up”; “Goldman Sachs: ‘It’s Not My Dog“; and “Mistaking Cause & Effect: Warren Buffett and the Role of Panic in The 2008 Crash.”
Also: “Drug Dealers vs. Bankers: ‘Top 10’ Differences“; “Movie Review: ‘The Big Short’ Entertains, But First it Has to Educate“; and “Out-of-Control Mega-Banks? I’ve Got Your Problem Right Here (and Here, and Here, and . . .).”
