Lehman Goes Bust

(Newser) - Had Lehman Brothers been more careful in its bankruptcy filing, it could have held on to as much as $75 billion that was destroyed in the process, the firm’s head restructuring agents say. A better-planned filing would have allowed the sale of some assets outside of court proceedings and would have afforded Lehman more time in unwinding its derivatives portfolio, the Wall Street Journal reports. More »

(Newser) - With the collapse of Lehman Brothers having opened an “anxious new era” in financial circles and among consumers at large, the auction that brought artist Damien Hirst $166 million on Sept. 15—the very day Lehman went bust—clearly marks the division, Martin Gayford writes for Bloomberg. By year’s end, sales and auctions had plummeted and the crash had begun. More »

(Newser) - A former Lehman Brothers broker was charged yesterday in a $4.8 million insider trading scheme built on his PR-exec wife’s knowledge of upcoming mergers, the AP reports. Matthew Devlin passed information to friends and associates (including former Playboy model Maria Checa), and won cash, luxury goods, and tuition for a Porsche driving school in return, the SEC said. His antics earned the couple the nickname “the golden goose.” More »

(Newser) - After refusing to bail out Lehman Brothers, the Federal Reserve funneled $87 billion to a subsidiary through JPMorgan Chase on Sept. 15, then another $51 billion the next day. The feds say they aimed to “facilitate an orderly wind-down” of Lehman’s broker-dealer operations, Andrew Ross Sorkin writes in the New York Times , but their changing explanations, and other issues, continue to muddy the waters. More »

(Newser) - At least there's one market that's booming in New York—the market for pills for your sleeplessness, anxiety, and depression, Crain’s New York Business reports. The meltdown in the financial industry has caused a surge in prescriptions: In September, as Lehman Brothers was collapsing, and AIG and Merrill Lynch were being rescued, sleep-aid prescriptions jumped 11% and anti-anxiety and anti-depressant drug prescriptions climbed 9% compared to a year before. More »

(Newser) - Markets surged yesterday when Barack Obama announced that Timothy Geithner would become treasury secretary as part of an all-star economic team. But Wall Street actually harbors some skepticism about Geithner, writes Andrew Sorkin in the New York Times . As chair of the New York Fed, Geithner was the point man during the critical days when Lehman Brothers collapsed, which many on Wall Street say exacerbated the crisis. More »

(Newser) - Investors have lost some $9 trillion since last year’s stock market peak, but at the center of the maelstrom, CEOs of some of the worst-performing companies are sitting pretty. Fift