Now, I'm not an economist or an American accountancy lawyer but, as far as I can see, Lehman Bros have applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Not gone bust, down the tubes, down the pan or any other sensationalist rubbish that the BBC and their cronies would have us believe.
Sure, this is not a perfect situation but it's not exactly 'meltdown' either.
For those who are not familiar with the concept of 'Chapter 11' it goes like this:
"When a troubled business is unable to service its debt or pay its creditors, the business or its creditors can file with a federal bankruptcy court for protection under either chapter 7 or chapter 11. In chapter 7, the business ceases operations and a trustee sells all of its assets and distributes the proceeds to its creditors. A chapter 11 filing is usually an attempt to stay in business while a bankruptcy court supervises the "reorganization" of the company's contractual and debt obligations. The court can grant complete or partial relief from most of the company's debts and its contracts, so that the company can make a fresh start. Sometimes, if the business's debts exceed its assets, then at the completion of bankruptcy the company's owners all end up without anything; all their rights and interests are ended and the company's creditors are left with ownership of the newly reorganized company.
In enacting chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy code, Congress concluded that it is sometimes the case that the value of a business is greater if sold or reorganized as a going concern than the value of the sum of its parts if the business's assets were to be sold off individually. It follows that it may be more economically efficient to allow a troubled company to continue running, cancel some of its debts, and give ownership of the newly reorganized company to the creditors whose debts were canceled. Alternatively, the business can be sold as a going concern with the net proceeds of the sale distributed to creditors ratably in accordance with statutory priorities. In this way, jobs may be saved, the engine of profitability which is the business is maintained rather than being dismantled, and, as a proponent of a chapter 11 plan is required to demonstrate as a precursor to plan confirmation, the business's creditors end up with more money than they would in a chapter 7 liquidation."
Source. Wikipedia who can put it better than me!
As I say, not perfect but a long way from what is being portrayed in our dumbed down, sensationalist mainstream media!!!