Lehman Brothers: 48 Hours That Broke the World

In September 2008, a 158-year-old Wall Street giant died in a single weekend — and nearly took the entire global financial system down with it. Lehman Brothers started in 1850 as a cotton shop in Montgomery, Alabama. By 2007 it was the fourth-largest investment bank in America, posting a record $4.2 billion profit. Eighteen months later it filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history: $639 billion in assets, $613 billion in debt. This is the full story — the cotton kings, the "Gorilla" CEO who bet everything on American houses, the 72 hours inside the New York Fed when every rescue failed, the Monday the Dow fell 500 points, and the accounting gimmick called Repo 105 that hid $50 billion until it was too late. CHAPTERS: 00:00 The 48-Hour Ultimatum 00:56 The Cotton Kings (1850–1994) 02:53 The Gorilla's Casino 05:10 The Cracks (2008) 06:50 The Seventy-Two Hours (Sept 12–14) 09:04 Monday, September 15 11:20 The Autopsy: Repo 105 13:51 Outro All figures in this video are drawn from public records: the Lehman Brothers Chapter 11 filing (Sept 15, 2008), the Valukas examiner's report (2010), and contemporary reporting. This video is a historical documentary for educational purposes and is not investment advice. Music: "Past the Edge", "Impending Boom", "Mourning Song", "Devastation and Revenge", "Sad Trio" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) — CC-BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...) New here? Empires Fall tells the true stories of how business empires rise — and how they fall. Subscribe for a new episode every day. #LehmanBrothers #FinancialCrisis #WallStreet