If only Lehman Brothers had been saved, all would have been for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Actually no. A decision to bail out the bank would almost certainly have had worse consequences than letting Dick Fuld and his company go under, writes Niall Ferguson

We are about to observe the next phase in the government’s attempt to stabilise the US financial system. It is about to launch its effort to reform the notoriously tangled and overlapping system of financial regulation. It is vital to get this right, says John Gapper
Citigroup has had to pull out all the stops. But the reality is that beyond the trading floor, a slowing global economy is hurting almost all of the rest of the US bank