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Five Years On, Learning Lehman's Lessons from the Panic of 2008: Are We Better Prepared for the Next Financial Crisis?

Thu, 12 September, 2013 12:00pm
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In mid-September 2008, Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest investment bank in the world, declared bankruptcy. The ensuing financial panic led to the worst crisis in the financial markets since 1929, nearly bringing down the entire U.S. financial system before massive government bailouts rescued the banks and the entire global financial system. Five years later, Main Street still lacks adequate safeguards against Wall Street's culture of aggressive risk-taking.

On September 12, 2013, Senator Elizabeth Warren and a panel of experts discussed lessons learned from Lehman Brothers' collapse, Wall Street's unprecedented lobbying campaign against new regulations mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act to make our financial markets stronger, and further steps that are needed to protect Main Street and U.S. taxpayers from Wall Street's risk-taking and the potential threat of additional government bailouts. 

Keynote Address by Senator Elizabeth Warren |  Watch Video

Panel Discussion | Watch Video

  • Neil Barofsky, Adjunct Professor of Law, NYU Law School, former Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), author of Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street
  • John Coffee, Adolf A. Berle Professor of Law, Columbia Law School, and Director, Columbia Law School’s Center on Corporate Governance
  • Jamie Galbraith, Professor of Government, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas and author, Inequality and Instability: A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis
  • Ted Kaufman, Visiting Professor, Duke University Law School, Former Senator, former Chair of the Congressional Oversight Committee for TARP

Closing Remarks | Watch Video

  • Lisa M. Fairfax, Leroy Sorenson Merrifield Research Professor of Law, and Director, Conference Programs, C-LEAF, The George Washington University Law School
  • William D. Cohan, Vanity Fair Contributing Editor, Bloomberg View Columnist, and author, Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World; House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street; and The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.

"Five Years On" In the Media

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