Requiem for Lehman Bros.

My latest at FrumForum: "How Lehman Went Bust," about The Last of the Imperious Rich: Lehman Brothers, 1844-2008. Excerpt:

A century and a half earlier, immigrant Henry Lehman had built up a solid reputation as a seller of reliable goods to the farmers he served as a traveling peddler in the antebellum South. In our time, the firm that bore the distinguished Lehman name proved willing to sell junk — toxic financial instruments that flew in the face of both propriety and prudence — and to do so knowingly, with deceptive marketing and accounting.

Whole thing here. See also the NYT review here.