Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

by Andrew Ross Sorkin

Instead of accounting for these deals in the traditional manner as “repurchase agreements” or “repos,” in which the firm would lend securities in exchange for cash, classifying them as “sales” had the effect of making the firm’s leverage look lower in than it really was: Lehman had managed to move $49 billion off of its books in the first quarter of 2008 and $50 billion in the second quarter.