Just think for a millisecond, if Lehman had the power to print money, why didn't it use it to bail itself out ? Well, Lehman could not print itself out of trouble.
Lehman ran out the ability to take on debt.
That makes no sense whatsoever. I know you think it does, but in all honesty it doesn't. That's why it's so hard to talk to the "Occupy" wackos. They have very strong, but wrong ideas, and any attempt for a constructive dialogue stops in a brick wall: you either "get it", or you are one of the sheeple, a puppet of the financial elite.
You seem to have the same old simpleton understanding of banks relying on Grandma depositor's money for much of anything. It makes enough intuitive sense that Joe Sixpack will buy it, so that is the story line which is pushed. That's true to a tiny degree insofar as they (sometimes) have some capital requirements, but that is largely a quaint reminder of days gone by. Banks primarily play around with debt (aka risk) in the OTC markets these days as evidenced by the notional value figures of the derivitive markets. True, there are some pockets of 'hot money' value (pension liabilities, depositor funds, etc) which are particularly valuable poker chips. These have already been lost so the only thing we have to look forward to now are how to break it to the losers (who didn't even know that they were playing) that there is nothing left.
I'm happy with my conception of how money works. It has, to me, remarkable explanatory powers when it comes to providing solutions to the puzzling things that pop up. As for being some sort of a 'puppet of the financial elite', I think I hardly qualify. I've bent over backward to avoid sitting on USD for the last almost decade, and I don't play around with 'mainstream' financial instruments since I has zero confidence that the likes of Harvey Pitt, Mary Shiavo, or Tim Geithner to 'have
my back'. I laughed my ass off all the way through 2008, and have every confidence that I will do so again in 2012.