Last sept. 15, the venerable investment-banking firm of Lehman Brothers-saddled with a lot of dud real estate investments and unable to persuade its jittery creditors to keep lending it money-filed for bankruptcy protection. It was the largest bankruptcy ever in the U.S., but the really big news was what happened afterward. First came a financial panic that threatened to shatter the global capitalist order, followed by an unprecedented-and unprecedentedly expensive-effort by governments on both sides of the Atlantic to patch things up.
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