Rodge Cohen Recalls the Collapse of Lehman Brothers in Interviews with TheStreet.com

September 15, 2010

On September 15, the two-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, Mr. Cohen was featured in two video interviews on TheStreet.com in which he discussed the financial giant's collapse. In “Remembering Lehman Brothers,” Mr. Cohen recalled the moment he learned Lehman would not survive. “I felt I had failed because we had been trying so hard for a period of months to save Lehman,” he said. “There was also a deep concern about an impending catastrophe. It wasn't rhetoric when we were trying to argue that if Lehman failed the systemic consequences were unknown and unknowable.” In the video, “Should Lehman Be Saved?,” Mr. Cohen considered what would have happened if Lehman had survived. “Much of what otherwise occurred, would have occurred in terms of individual institutions, but you would not have had, for example, the collapse of the Reserve Fund, which triggered a run on the entire money market fund industry,” he said. “It may have been possible then that the pressure would not have mounted on Wachovia, so it is conceivable that we would never have had to go through the TARP process.”