Meltzer was critical of the Federal Reserve's decision to rescue the leading bond-insurer AIG when it did so in 2008: "these disasters should be headed off early, or should be left to the marketplace to settle." In turn, the Fed's decision "not" to rescue Lehman Brothers was one which, at the time, Meltzer appeared to applaud. Contrasting it with the AIG rescue, he commented: "I would say we ought to look at Lehman Brothers. They let Lehman Brothers fail. Within a few days, just a few days, Barclays was there buying up some of Lehman's assets..." A year later, however, Meltzer expressed a more critical view of the Fed's handling of the Lehman case: "After 30 years of bailing out almost all large financial firms, the Fed made the horrendous mistake of changing its policy in the midst of a recession... Allowing Lehman to fail without warning is one of the worst blunders in Federal Reserve history..."