Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission yesterday that he should have been “more straightforward” with Congress when he avoided saying the central bank had no means to save Lehman Brothers.
Shortly after Lehman’s collapse in 2008 Mr Bernanke told Congress that the government had “declined” to rescue the bank.
“I regret not being more straightforward there because clearly it has supported the mistaken impression that in fact we could have done something,” he told the commission, speaking a day after Dick Fuld, former chairman of Lehman Brothers, said the Fed could and should have rescued his group.