The night before, Bernanke and Paulson had agreed that the time had come for a systemic solution; deciding the fate of each financial firm one at a time wasn’t working. It had been six months between Bear and Lehman, but if Morgan Stanley went down, probably no more than six hours would pass before Goldman did, too. The big banks would follow, and God only knew what might happen after that. And so Paulson stood in front of his staff in search of a holistic solution, a solution that would require intervention. He still hated the idea of bailouts, but now he knew he needed to succumb to the
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