Bloomberg reported that Merrill Lynch’s former CEO John A. Thain told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, according to recently released audio files, that banking chiefs weren’t “strong enough” during 2008 meetings in insisting that then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson reverse his opposition to a U.S.-led rescue of Lehman.

Days before Lehman’s September 2008 collapse, Paulson convened CEOs including Thain, Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase to try to get the banks to help fund a rescue, Bloomberg said.

“We collectively, the group of us, we should have just grabbed them and shaken them and said, ‘Look, you guys cannot do this,'” Thain told FCIC interviewers in a September 17, 2010, interview. “Allowing Lehman to go bankrupt was the single biggest mistake of the financial crisis”, Bloomberg reported.

Lehman filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, roiling markets and helping contribute to the bailout of insurer American International Group Inc. and the purchase of Merrill by Bank of America.

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