Ten years after the financial crisis, a nagging question that has persisted is this: Why did the U.S. government  allow Lehman Brothers to fail while it bailed out AIG? Both of the financial services companies were large and traced their financial woes to excesses in subprime housing mortgage financing. To add insult to Lehman’s injury, AIG’s 2 billion bailout began the same week when the former folded, and a week prior the government had taken over the financially embattled mortgage guarantee companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And in March of that year, the Federal Reserve had helped bail out Bear Stearns, another struggling Wall Street firm, by loaning billion to its buyer, JPMorgan Chase. Lehman’s wounds “were self-inflicted,” whereas AIG’s collapse would have caused a worldwide “systemic macro event” with cataclysmic repercussions, according to Madelyn Antoncic, who was chief risk officer at Lehman Brothers between 2002 and 2007, among other roles during a decade at the company.…