Cover photo: Robert Scoble (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)
Lehman Brothers: The Bankruptcy That Shook the World
How a bank that survived a civil war and the Great Depression collapsed in a single weekend.
About
On the night of September 15, 2008, hundreds of people walk out of a Manhattan skyscraper carrying cardboard boxes. Their company had survived the American Civil War, two world wars and the Great Depression. It fell in a single weekend.
This audiobook follows the whole arc of Lehman Brothers: from three immigrant brothers in Alabama who accepted bales of cotton instead of cash, to a Wall Street giant betting borrowed money on mortgages that would never be repaid. From the desperate negotiations of that weekend and London's veto, to the retirees in Hong Kong who watched their savings vanish overnight.
A story about what a bank really is — and how fast something built on nothing but trust can collapse.
Sources
- Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission — "Final Report", ch. 18: "September 2008: The Bankruptcy of Lehman" — https://fcic-static.law.stanford.edu/cdn_media/fcic-reports/fcic_final_report_chapter18.pdf
- Wikipedia — "Lehman Brothers" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehman_Brothers
- Wikipedia — "Bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_of_Lehman_Brothers
- Wikipedia — "Mayer Lehman" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayer_Lehman
- Harvard Business School, Baker Library — "Lehman Brothers: Family Partners" — https://www.library.hbs.edu/special-collections-and-archives/exhibits/lehman/lehman-brothers-family-partners
- Federal Reserve — Press release on AIG, 16 September 2008 — https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/other20080916a.htm
- Yale Journal of Financial Crises — "United States: Reserve Primary Fund Suspension, 2008" — https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1655&context=journal-of-financial-crises
- Hong Kong Monetary Authority — "SFC, HKMA and 16 banks reach agreement on Minibonds" (2009) — https://www.hkma.gov.hk/eng/news-and-media/press-releases/2009/07/20090722-4/
- NBER — Laurence Ball, "The Fed and Lehman Brothers" (2016) — https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22410/w22410.pdf
- Bloomberg — "Lehman's London Arm to Close, 17 Years and £28 Billion Later" (2025) — https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-08/lehman-s-london-arm-can-close-after-17-years-and-28-billion
- Britannica Money — "Great Recession" — https://www.britannica.com/money/great-recession
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