AIG

Before anyone knew it the unthinkable was about to happen. Americas largest insurances company known as AIG was on the brink of destruction. What started the collapse of the insurance giant was a large number of was an accumulation of misplaced bets on credit default swaps. When the housing market collapsed AIG's value started to seriously plummet. If AIG was allowed to fail there is a guarentee of an economic collapse. Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner who by the way is the Secretary of Treasury in the Obama adminstration set up a 85 billion dollar bailout for the insurance giant.

Lehman Brothers

One of the larger Banks on Wall Street, Lehman Brothers was on the verge of collapsing in September of 2008. Like all the other banks spiraling down they sent messages to Paulson and Bernanke asking for a personal bailout. Paulson however because of his own pride as well as his republican friends in congress pressuring him, he did not advise government intervention which ended up being a fatal decision for Lehman Brothers and a almost fatal decision for the market. Instead he advised Lehmans CEO to find a buyer to save this ailing company. However not one bank was up for the risk, Lehman asked for the same treatment Bear recieved but Paulson refused. Just like that Lehman Brothers was no more.

Henry Paulson

The famous CEO of Goldman Sachs who left his job to serve in the Bush administration as Secretary of Treasury took a vast amount of blame for the crisis. A very intense hardworking republican who preached so much about no government intervention with business had no other choice but to call for congresses aid. Three main arguments against Paulson are he was late to joining the party in fighting the financial crisis. Secondly he let Lehman Brothers, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fail which caused severe issues even though he should have followed in Bernankes footsteps in terms of how he saved Bear. Lastly the 700 billion dollar bailout plan just ended up being a wastefull mess with congress. To his credit the actions that caused the crisis were set in motions before Paulson took office.

Ben Bernanke

The Chairmen of the Federal Reserve as well as 2009 Time Magazines man of the year is looked at the hero for this crisis. He is wordly respected by all who know him and made crucial decisions to save the economy from a depression. In college he studied everything about the depression in the early '30s . He called for a confrence late one friday evening with all the major players in the economic world such as CEO's and Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson of the Bush administration. He realized what kind of trouble Bear was in and simply said if we do not do anything now there will be no economy on Monday. His idea to save Bear Stearns saved our nations economy and many jobs. Without Bernanke there is no telling where the economy would be.

Bear Stearns

In the spring on 2008 the housing bubble burst and created trillions of dollars of toxic morgages. Bear Stearns invested billions into the housing market and when that failed Bear went into crisis mode. Over a weekend Bears share went from $171 down to $57. This in time would cause a dommino effect and hurt every bank doing business with Bear, and if they collapsed a great depression would have been inevitable. All banks quickly cut off all ties with Bear, and their stock dropped down to two dollars a share. As this contagious virus was spreading Ben Bernanke created a shotgun marriage between J.P. Morgan and Bear to salvage the market and granted $30 billion to cover the toxic morgages. Bear was saved but left many American bankers jobless.