Were Wall Street Banks "too big to fail"?

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]But, on September 15th, 2008, the investment bank Lehman Brothers suddenly collapsed, [music] triggering full-scale financial crisis.

[00:00:09]September [music] and October of 2008 were really, I thought, [music] uh the scariest of the entire Bush administration.

[00:00:19]9/11 [music] was a horrible and, of course, by far the most devastating moment during the entire [music] 8 years of that presidency. But, from the standpoint of an >> [music] >> ongoing threat that everybody in government knew that we had [music] to do something about, the financial crisis, it was really scary.

[00:00:42]In this difficult time, I know many Americans are wondering about the security of their finances.

[00:00:47]Every American should know that the federal government continues to enforce laws and regulations protecting your money.

[00:00:54]Bush's Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, realized that his piecemeal efforts to stabilize the financial system were not enough.

[00:01:03]Confidence in Wall Street banks had shattered.

[00:01:06]And, as lending dried up, businesses across the country faced the very real prospect of bankruptcy.

[00:01:14]These big institutions on Wall Street, where money moved with a click of a mouse at the speed of light around the world.

[00:01:23]If you had another big bank or two having failed, it would have been hard to figure out how to even put the thing back together again. I had visions of food lines, massive unemployment, disasters that were worse than the Great Depression.