This week, as you may have noticed on Monday, but had probably forgotten by this morning, was the first anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
For Rip Van Winkles who look at their finances only once a year and note that stockmarkets, house prices and currencies are today pretty much where they were a year ago, Lehman was a second-tier Wall Street investment bank that went bankrupt on September 15 2008: 9/15 is not ingrained in our memories like 9/11 but it triggered what was briefly the biggest financial crisis in history and inspired widespread prophecies of a 1930s-style Great Depression and the end of the capitalist world as we know it. We now know that the sky did not fall in as the Chicken Little commentators predicted, but does this mean that all the fuss was just a storm in a teacup?
The answer is no. As a result of Lehman’s bankruptcy, millions of people have needlessly lost their jobs, hundreds of thousands of homes have been needlessly repossessed and trillions of dollars, pounds and euros have been needlessly added to the debt burdens of governments around the world. I repeat that word needlessly because most of these losses would not have happened if Lehman had been supported or wound down in an orderly way.
The chaotic collapse of Lehman was the heart attack that turned a serious, but manageable, ailment in the world of finance and the housing markets into a near-death experience for the real economy of industry and jobs. In short, the world changed with Lehman.
9/15 Is a Date We Should Never Forget – Anatole Kaletsky, Times of London
September of last year…it all ended
This week, as you may have noticed on Monday, but had probably forgotten by this morning, was the first anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
For Rip Van Winkles who look at their finances only once a year and note that stockmarkets, house prices and currencies are today pretty much where they were a year ago, Lehman was a second-tier Wall Street investment bank that went bankrupt on September 15 2008: 9/15 is not ingrained in our memories like 9/11 but it triggered what was briefly the biggest financial crisis in history and inspired widespread prophecies of a 1930s-style Great Depression and the end of the capitalist world as we know it. We now know that the sky did not fall in as the Chicken Little commentators predicted, but does this mean that all the fuss was just a storm in a teacup?
The answer is no. As a result of Lehman’s bankruptcy, millions of people have needlessly lost their jobs, hundreds of thousands of homes have been needlessly repossessed and trillions of dollars, pounds and euros have been needlessly added to the debt burdens of governments around the world. I repeat that word needlessly because most of these losses would not have happened if Lehman had been supported or wound down in an orderly way.
The chaotic collapse of Lehman was the heart attack that turned a serious, but manageable, ailment in the world of finance and the housing markets into a near-death experience for the real economy of industry and jobs. In short, the world changed with Lehman.
9/15 Is a Date We Should Never Forget – Anatole Kaletsky, Times of London