Federal Reserve chairman says central bank did not have the power to lend taxpayers’ money to Lehman The US Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, bluntly declared today that it would have been unlawful for the US government to rescue Lehman Brothers, arguing that the Wall Street bank’s finances were too weak to justify an emergency injection of public money in the run-up to its 2008 bankruptcy. In almost three hours of testimony to America’s cross-party financial crisis inquiry commission (FCIC), Bernanke flatly contradicted claims by Lehman’s former boss, Dick Fuld, that the bank was a victim of an unjustified panic and a refusal by the government to step in. The Fed chief expressed regret for failing to be more “straightforward” about Lehman’s fate in the past, saying his past equivocation may have “supported the mistaken impression that in fact we could have done something”.