ATLAS

Crisis Replay

Historical Crisis Database

Step through every event tick-by-tick — pause, branch, and replay alternate interventions

5Crises
640+Events
1998–2023Coverage
BranchingTimelines
EXTREME SEVERITY

Lehman Brothers Collapse

Sep 2008 – Mar 2009

2008

The largest bankruptcy in US history. $639 billion in assets. Zero warning. The day the global financial system froze.

What Happened

Bear Stearns collapses. Fannie and Freddie nationalized. Then — on September 15, 2008 — Lehman Brothers files for Chapter 11. The Fed does not intervene. Interbank lending seizes overnight. AIG requires a $182B bailout. Congress eventually passes TARP at $700B. The cascade nearly destroys the global financial system.

Key Institutions

Lehman BrothersAIGBear StearnsMerrill LynchCitigroupFederal Reserve
Peak Loss / Impact$10T+ global equity value
Replay Lehman 2008

Crisis timelines are synthesized from public reporting, FDIC post-mortems, BIS working papers, SEC/CFTC reports, and Fed testimony. Event counts are approximate and represent key inflection points, not exhaustive records.