ISAS Briefs

The decision of the United States Treasury not to guarantee the debts or the bail out of Lehman Brothers, one of the four major investment banks in the United States, has resulted in the institution going into bankruptcy yesterday. Merrill Lynch, whose share value has halved in the last few weeks, has merged with Bank of America, to ward off a similar fate. And next in line could well be AIG, another major international finance company. The total write down in the United States alone, since the credit crisis began, exceeds US$500 billion, with possibly as much more to come.