The response given to justify the decision to let Lehman Brothers go bankrupt is that, for citizens in general, and for tax-payers in particular, it is not fair to use public funds to bail out financial institutions which, in the preceding months and years, had accumulated massive profits for their shareholders and executives.
Obviously, for those assigned the task of deciding whether or not to come to a bank’s rescue it is not an easy task to convince the electorate that the future losses must be nationalised, when the past profits were privatised.