From The Real Betrayal at the Federal Reserve - Andrew McAfee - Harvard Business Review:
Part of why the bailouts were packaged the way they were was because the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers went a lot worse than the Federal Reserve had anticipated. The Federal Reserve had an expectation of how the collapse of a major investment bank like Lehman would go, and when it went far worse than their expectation they reacted with maximum force…</blockquote>