Matt Levine, Columnist

SEC Decides to Let Lehman Stay Dead

Why did Lehman Brothers fail five years ago? Oh I don't know, but you know who'll tell you? Pretty much everyone on the Internet, this week!Â

September 9, 2013 at 6:13 PM UTC

By Matt Levine

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

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Why did Lehman Brothers fail five years ago? Oh I don't know, but you know who'll tell you? Pretty much everyone on the Internet, this week! With the five-year anniversary of Lehman's bankruptcy coming up on Sunday, if you want to be told what went wrong at Lehman and What It All Means, you are in, like, certainly one of the top five weeks for that ever. So that is nice for you.

Today, though, you can read DealBook addressing a related topic, which is why regulators didn't sue or prosecute or jail or guillotine anyone at Lehman for blowing it up. The answer you might expect -- well, the answer I might expect, being me, is "because no one broke any laws." I just met you, and it's at least possible that you might expect something more like "because the system is rigged and evil banksters never get in trouble."* But those would have seemed like the leading contenders: "No one at Lehman broke laws" or "The corrupt and craven SEC isn't enforcing the laws Lehman broke."