I don't think Bernanke's account is fully candid. Perhaps he is not even honest with himself. The impression I have (granted, a remote one) is that Paulson and

I don't think Bernanke's account is fully candid. Perhaps he is not even honest with himself. The impression I have (granted, a remote one) is that Paulson and other financial industry alumni within the administration convinced Obama that they needed a blank check to avoid collapse. They ignored long-standing policy, and arguably the law of the land, essentially to give money to companies they did not want to fail. To argue that they lacked authority to save Lehman seems disingenuous to me, because they lacked authority to do a lot of the things they did -- until Paulson went literally on bent knee to Congress to ask for that authority. He did not bend his knee for Lehman, and neither did Bernanke. Not that Lehman deserved a bailout -- perhaps none of them did!