‘But what about BoA and Barclays? How could you have known they weren’t going to close their deals and buy Lehman’s?’

Zorn reached into his jacket, pulled out his wallet and extracted a thousand dollars. He pushed them across the table to Misti’s companion, a brash young dealer by the name of Luis Ferrone, and said, ‘Buy yourself another friend.’ Then he looked at Misti and gestured at the empty space on the banquette next to him. She was round there in a flash.

‘So,’ Zorn said, ‘you want to know about those other banks? Well, that’s a no-brainer. Those deals were never going to happen. The moment the purchasers looked at Lehman’s books it was obvious that their true assets were nowhere near as big as they claimed. Officially, Lehman Brothers had around forty billion in assets. My understanding is the true figure was closer to twenty-five. That was when Bank of America decided to buy Merrill Lynch instead. Which left Barclays. But they had a problem. Lehman’s was bust. It couldn’t keep trading or even running as a business without fresh cash, and Barclays couldn’t hand over any till the deal was signed and sealed. So come Monday morning, someone was going to have to step in with a bridging loan to cover a deal that could still fall apart. So who could do that?’

‘Uncle Sam?’ Misti suggested.

‘Funny you should say that. Dick Fuld had the same idea, till Paulson told him no way was Washington going to hand over a single taxpayer dollar to bail out his bank. Now they got personal. There was a guy at Lehman’s, George Herbert Walker, who’s a cousin of the President. Word is, they asked him to put in a call to the Oval Office. Well, if he did, Dubya didn’t take it. So then people said, “Well, gee, Barclays is a Brit bank, maybe their government’ll give us the money.” That was when the Brits pointed out that hell would freeze over before their taxpayers were going to risk billions of bucks to support a US bank. Believe me, I didn’t lose a second of sleep over that. And you know what? Nor did Barclays. Yesterday they went picking through the wreckage at Lehman’s and acquired most of its US divisions for less than two billion. I reckon they paid about ten cents on the dollar. Wish I’d seen Fuld’s face when that news came through.’