The news got worse. On Tuesday, the government reversed course and bailed out a giant insurance corporation called AIG with an $85 billion loan. Henry Paulson, the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, said AIG was "too big to fail." I wasn't sure what that meant, but it quickly became the watchword of the unfolding financial meltdown. Suddenly everybody - except Lehman Brothers apparently - was "too big" to be allowed to fail. Money flew out Treasury's door as it moved desperately to head off what was quickly becoming a cascading crisis of panic on Wall Street.
By Friday, it was so bad that Paulson decided to go to Congress with a demand for $700 billion to 'bailout' endangered financial institutions, all of whom were too big to fail apparently. It was the only way, he insisted, to avert a total collapse of the American financial system.
Wow.
In the span of just five days, we went from Business-As-Usual on Wall Street, albeit with some annoying storm clouds raining on its free market ideology, to the verge of total financial collapse. And it wasn't just Wall Street - the effects of this meltdown immediately destabilized markets and financial institutions around
In other words, what happened on 9/15 wasn't simply a thunderclap of immense proportions, but more akin to a nuclear explosion - one whose destructive radioactive effects will be felt, I'm certain, for a long, long time.
And just like that a sixth warning light, in the shape of a $ sign, flashed into existence on the dashboard of the speeding vehicle called 'civilization.'
Flying to Sacramento, California, on the following day to attend a conference, I scooped up newspapers in the airport, including one that shouted: "The Week That Changed America." On the plane, I digested the grim analyses.
"This past week marks a decisive turn in the evolution of American capitalism," wrote David Wessel of Wall Street Journal. "Gone is the faith, shared by the nation's leadership, that the best road to prosperity is to unleash financial markets to allocate capital, take risks, enjoy profits, absorb losses. Gone is the belief that markets correct themselves when they overshoot."
The Associated Press described the bankruptcy filing of Lehman Brothers as "one of the most momentous days in Wall Street history since legendary banker J. Pierpont Morgan helped broker the rescue of financial markets during the Panic of 1907."
Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post wrote: "This is what a Category 4 financial crisis looks like. Giant blue-chip financial institutions swept away in a matter of days. Banks
Reproduction is permitted, as long as credit is given to the author.