Not Bailing Out Lehman Is ‘Brave’?

What a sad day it is for America when an op-ed columnist feels obliged to describe politicians as brave for not using taxpayer dollars to bail out a collapsing company.

As Avinash Persaud writes in today’s Financial Times:

It was a brave decision. By abandoning Lehman Brothers, a 158-year-old piece of Wall Street furniture, and refusing to remove their hands from their pockets when Merrill Lynch came calling, US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and New York Fed Governor Tim Geithner had one of the busiest weekends of dispassion on record.

Imagine that: in the U.S. big businesses are actually allowed to fail.

What a novel concept.