Doomed To Repeat

Meet Alayne Fleischmann, the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking.

"The program has managed a rare trick of being perpetually maligned on Wall Street while driving asset prices up enough to make lots of people on Wall Street very wealthy."

Whether he's being ripped for every single one of his economic-policy plans or suffering the indignity of being asked by Charlie Rose about his wrinkles, every day this year he has woken up and found himself in a fresh version of hell.

Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

In January 2010, reporters from Planet Money bought a toxic asset—you know, the things that blew up wall street banks, sank the economy and brought the global financial system to a halt—one of those. And "Toxie" turned out to be an encyclopedia of the financial crisis.

It revealed Edward Quince to the world, for example.

Around 3 minutes, 50 seconds in he addresses Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big to Fail.

...well, wait a sec. You mean like this guy? OK maybe.

Al Jazeera presents the facts, plus scary music and sound effects.

Basically if you feel like watching two hours of CSPAN where Dick Fuld testifies and it's very uncomfortable for everybody, you and I were probably separated at birth.

...You mean other than "still wealthy"?

...mainly because if G-d doesn't, then no one will.

Understanding why Lehman was allowed to die goes beyond apportioning responsibility for the financial crisis and the recession that cost millions of ordinary Americans jobs and savings. Today, long after the bailouts, the debate rages over the Fed’s authority to bail out failing firms. Some Fed officials worry that when the next financial crisis comes, the Fed will have less power to shield the financial system from the failure of a single large bank. After the Lehman debacle, Congress curbed the Fed’s ability to rescue a bank in trouble.

Robert Shiller makes a point about the last three stock market crashes.

Workers assemble in the Lehman Brothers Canary Wharf, London office, September 11, 2008. (Kevin Coombs/Reuters)