When Buffett Was Called To Save Lehman | Crisis On Wall Street

As Barclays tried to come up with a deal to buy Lehman, its president called Warren Buffett to ask for financial backing. But the simple message fell through the cracks.

Watch the premiere of the CNBC Original “Crisis On Wall Street: The Week That Shook The World” Wednesday, Sept.12 at 10pm ET/PT.

Ten years after the fall of Lehman Brothers, CNBC has produced the definitive televised account of the historic bankruptcy and cascade of events over a September weekend in 2008 that led to the worst financial crisis in generations. In this prime time original documentary, Andrew Ross Sorkin, CNBC anchor and author of the groundbreaking best-seller "Too Big to Fail," reports on how the nation and the world came as close as ever to a full economic collapse.

The story is told through gripping interviews with those at the highest reaches of the U.S. government as well as the CEOs of the nation’s largest banks who gathered to try to save Lehman Brothers from failure. Wall Street chiefs Jamie Dimon, John Thain, and others describe dramatic, around-the-clock negotiations. Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson tells of the desperate moment when he realized that a Lehman bankruptcy could bring down the world’s financial system.

Could a financial crisis of this magnitude happen again? Sorkin puts that question time and again to the people gathered for this CNBC documentary, who shouldered the fate of the world’s finances and who recall the nightmare scenario they faced down ten years ago.

"It would be breadlines across the country for a generation,” former president of the N.Y. Federal Reserve Tim Geithner told Sorkin. “We did feel that we were making choices and faced with outcomes that would be devastating to the lives of hundreds of millions of people."

About CNBC: From 'Wall Street' to 'Main Street' to award winning original documentaries and Reality TV series, CNBC has you covered. Experience special sneak peeks of your favorite shows, exclusive video and more.

Connect with CNBC News Online

#CNBC
#2008FinancialCrisis

When Buffett Was Called To Save Lehman | Crisis On Wall Street | CNBC

[luccardi.]

Imagine that you have so much money that the Lehman Brothers call you to back them up...

[obits]

LMAO, when you ask a guy for a ton of money fast and he says “fax it, ” you go to Office Max and buy a fax machine.

[rodriguedjikeuchi]

Lesson #1: when you are given instructions, follow them.

[utkarshkant]

Any thing to know is fed is the largest financial system in America and doesn't have a fax machine .

[soko]

It was fate for Warren not to help Lehman.

[jtstacey]

I suggest people interested in this time read the book Too Big To Fail by Andrew Sorkin. Basically long story short when looking at Lehman's finances it raised a lot of red flags for Buffet so he passed on investing in them. Lehman during the time Buffet was doing his homework on them went out and raised capital on the premise that Buffet was looking to invest in them.

[CheokCG]

1 interview cut into 10 videos, something you need to learn from CNBC

[amjadalinavaz]

During 2007 - 08, for every 1$ investment of the shareholders, 30$ was the debt for LB! Comparing to their 4.1B $ net income, 668B dollar was the debt. Its just like pouring your table salt into sea. WB is a Wise man.

[כולנוביחד]

Whom Can We Trust If No One Is Trustworthy?
One of my favorite quips from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is when Tom is defined as “a glittering hero…the pet of the old, the envy of the young, ” and there were “some that believed that he would be President, yet, if he escaped hanging.” With these few words, Twain captured the essence of leadership in our world. Those who get to the top are the fiercest, most determined, and most ruthless. Today, the latter quality has become so intense that we can no longer believe our leaders, and certainly not trust them to have our best interest in mind.
I am not accusing any leader in particular, or even leaders as a whole. It is simply that in an egoistic world, where people vie to topple one another on their way to the top, the one at the top is clearly the one who trampled over and knocked down more people than anyone else. Concisely, to get to the top in an egoistic world you have to be the biggest egoist.
So how do we know whom to trust? We don’t know and we cannot know. All we know is that we are in the dark.
In a culture of unhinged selfishness, any conspiracy theory seems reasonable, while truth is nowhere to be found. When every person who says or writes something is trying to promote some hidden agenda, you have no way of knowing who is right, what really happened, or if anything happened at all.
The only way to get some clarity in the news and goodwill from our leaders is to say “Enough!” to our current system and build something entirely independent. The guiding principle of such a system should be “information only, ” no commentary. Commentary means that information has already been skewed. Information means saying only what happened, as much as possible, not why, and not who is to blame and who we should praise.
Concurrently, we must begin a comprehensive process of self-teaching. We have to know not only what is happening, but why we skew and distort everything. In other words, we have to know about human nature and how it inherently presents matters according to its own subjective view, which caters to one’s own interest. To “clear” ourselves from that deformity, we must learn how to rise above our personal interest and develop an equally favorable attitude toward others. This is our only guarantee that our interpretation of things will be even and correct.
Once we achieve such an attitude, we will discover that the bad things we see in our world reflect our own, internal wickedness. Our ill-will toward others creates a world where ill-will governs, and so the world is filled with wickedness and cruelty. Therefore, all we need in order to create positive leadership—and to generally eliminate ill-will from the world—is to generate goodwill within us. When we nurture goodwill toward others, we will fill the world with goodwill. As a result, the world will fill with kindness and compassion. By changing ourselves, we will create a world that is opposite from the world we have created through our desires to govern, patronize, and often destroy other people.

[tuannguyen-ytty]

Warrent new there was a voicemail, he just want to stay out .

[tbk]

you know you are win at life when bank call you directly ask you to save them

[KJ-suph]

Seems like the voicemail wasn't that important if you don't try to contact the person again or deliver the info to him in person.

[johnsanderson]

"As Barclays tried to come up with a deal to buy Lehman ..."

Barclays is a UK Bank ! Berkshire Hathaway is run by Warren Buffet.

[chopstickx]

No fax machine? What kind of excuse for trying to borrow a billion dollars.

[danabram]

Jfc I admire Buffett but he needs to get with the times get an iPhone know the product and then invest in tech. Like he had all the time in the world to invest in Microsoft after meeting Gates and instead he bought IBM which no one remembers let alone uses which is obviously why he had to sell at a loss.