Lehman Brothers: Too Big to Fail?

In September 2008, Hank Paulson, U.S. Treasury Secretary, Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Tim Geithner, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of NY, found themselves in the eye of the mightiest financial storm since the Great Depression. After months of battling the crisis, they were confronted with the largest problem they had encountered yet—Lehman Brothers, the global investment bank, was teetering on the edge of failure. This case asks students to consider what the appropriate response from the policymakers and central bankers should have been.