Lehman’s failure caused extraordinary panic. Technically, some of the damage can be traced back to its effect on the money market funds because Lehman defaulted its commercial paper. Absent the Lehman failure, the recession would have been less severe and handled correctly, this period would look more like the dot-com bubble bursting or the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s

Laurence Ball, Professor and Chair, Economics, on the role Lehman Brothers played in the 2008 financial crisis.

Medium, February 18, 2019