“It’s just not that big of an event. But that’s not what people want it to be, so they’ll make it not that way if they can,” said the other. “They just want to be mad and don’t know what they’re talking about and want to be outraged.” After an interview, that executive sent a follow-up email comparing the widespread furor over Lehman Brothers to the groupthink that sent America into Iraq after Sept. 11.

The idea, a year and a half after the biggest bankruptcy in American history began, is that criticism of the firm is the domain of unsophisticates. “When I read this, I giggle a little bit. Because $50 billion is a shitload of money, but in the grand scheme of things,” said a third source, a former managing director in England—where the accounting gimmick, named Repo 105, was given a legal endorsement that it couldn’t get here, “$50 billion is a drop in the ocean.”