I watched "Too Big to Fail"...

...the other night on HBO and another show (above) about the movie. They were both very well done and explained the financial crisis in a way that was easy to understand.

Andrew Ross Sorkin, who wrote the book on which the movie is based, said a couple of things in particular that caught my interest. The first was at about 5:34 of the above clip. Sorkin said that Richard Fuld, the CEO of Lehman Brothers, owned stock in the company that was at one time worth $1 billion. By the time the investment bank declared bankruptcy in the fall of 2008, Fuld's holdings had dwindled to only $56,000.

Sorkin goes on to explain (at about 11:10) that after Lehman failed, Morgan Stanley was expected to be next. And after Morgan, Goldman. And after Goldman, General Electric. That's how the Wall Street crisis began to affect Main Street.

According to a rumor during the week of the Lehman bankruptcy, Sorkin goes on to say, Bank of America may have ceased funding McDonald's, causing the hamburger chain to fail to pay its employees.

That's how close the United States was to an economic disaster.