From TPM reader JS ...

Nearly everything reader MH writes is, to greater or lesser degrees, incorrect.  Might as well have been written by Vikram Pandit. 

I don't have time to get into this right now, but attached is a very good description of what went down in the fourth quarter of 2008, including a detailed account of exactly what happened after Lehman failed.  Note that a lot of the CDS/counterparty issues were resolved over the weekend before they let LEH go, and that since then the Fed has put in place liquidity backstops that prevent many of the post-LEH consequences from recurring even in the event of another major bankruptcy.  Taking the big money-center banks into receivership would indeed be an exceedingly complex task requiring considerable preparation, much of it done in secrecy.  but it can be done.