Crisis intelligence deck

Plotline

Select a moment from September 2008 to examine cascading hypotheses, collateral impacts, and policy responses—mirrored here with curated testimony and filings.

September 2008 casefileStatic mock dataGraph + timeline views
Systemic Risk9/15/2008, 4:00:00 AMConfidence 91%
Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy Filing
After losses on mortgage-backed securities and a failed capital raise, Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 protection, triggering the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history and freezing short-term credit markets.

Lehman lost access to overnight funding after counterparties demanded more collateral than the firm could supply, pushing the 158-year-old bank into bankruptcy.

Institutions

  • Lehman Brothers
  • Barclays
  • Bank of America

Regulators

  • Federal Reserve
  • U.S. Treasury

Instruments

  • Repo financing
  • Mortgage-backed securities

Root-cause hypotheses

Ranked by priority
Priority 93%Confidence: HighWindow: 1/1/2007 – 9/12/2008

Lehman accumulated $85B in illiquid mortgage assets while leverage exceeded 30× tangible equity.

src-lev-10ksrc-senate-report

Mitigation: Enforce lower leverage caps for broker-dealers and require dynamic haircuts on level-3 assets.

Priority 71%Confidence: MediumWindow: 9/12/2008 – 9/14/2008

Weekend negotiations with potential buyers collapsed after the Treasury declined to extend loss-sharing guarantees.

src-nyfed-memosrc-ft-coverage

Mitigation: Create standing resolution authority to absorb losses without ad hoc guarantees.

Causal network
Textual snapshot of Plotline's graph view summarizing nodes and influence strength.

Nodes

  • Lehman bankruptcyevent

    $613B in liabilities

  • Excess leveragecause

    30× tangible equity

  • Failed rescue talkscondition

    No buyer of last resort

Edges

  • Excess leverage destabilizes Lehman bankruptcy89% confidence
  • Failed rescue talks triggers Lehman bankruptcy67% confidence
Incident timeline
Key control room moments and their operational impact scores.
9/12/2008, 2:00:00 PMImpact: Medium
coordinationfunding

Federal Reserve convened Wall Street executives to coordinate a private-sector rescue.

9/14/2008, 6:00:00 PMImpact: High
mergersregulation

Bank of America pursued Merrill Lynch instead of Lehman; Barclays could not obtain U.K. government approval.

9/15/2008, 4:00:00 AMImpact: High
liquidityrepo

Lehman filed for Chapter 11; tri-party repo market seized as clearing banks withheld intraday credit.

Source material
Evidence packets and structured follow-up checklists originate from Plotline's document graph.
SEC EDGARRelevance 92%

Lehman Brothers 2007 10-K leverage disclosure

Average net leverage ratio was 30.7× with $85B in residential and commercial mortgage exposures.

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U.S. Bankruptcy CourtRelevance 88%

Lehman Brothers: Examiner's Report

Repo 105 transactions temporarily removed $50B of assets from the balance sheet to mask leverage.

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Federal Reserve Bank of New YorkRelevance 71%

NY Fed weekend meeting notes

Government backstop deemed politically untenable after criticism of the Bear Stearns support.

Financial TimesRelevance 66%

Why the Barclays rescue collapsed

U.K. regulators withheld approval without a shareholder vote, leaving Lehman without a buyer.

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