Late Tuesday -- on the one-year anniversary of its bankruptcy filing -- Lehman Brothers accused Barclays Capital (NYSE: BCS) of taking $8.2 billion more than it should have when it purchased some of its key assets a year ago. Less than a week after Lehman filed for bankruptcy, the court approved of the sale to Barclays. Now Lehman is asking a judge to force Barclays to return some of the money taken as part of the deal, including $5 billion it says was given as extra collateral, which was not disclosed to the court.

Interesting timing and an interesting claim, don't you think? The timing is interesting because it is a year after the bankruptcy filing, which sounds like more than just a coincidence. But what is truly interesting is the fact that Lehman is trying to get quite a bit of money back by making a claim that was not disclosed to the court.

Mary Schapiro, chairperson of the the SEC, wants to collect critical data on derivatives transactions to pursue market abuses.

Schapiro said that regulators need the data to construct an audit trail to find out who is doing insider trading and market manipulation. The U.S. Senate is investigating the derivatives markets but is up against a brick wall because it cannot pin down who it is that actually pulled the trigger on the trades. So they are relying on the SEC to provide this data. Schapiro said that the SEC is having difficulty identifying derivative investors and the size of their trades.

Good news everyone! The Fed believes that the worst of the recession has passed. At least that is what its snapshot of economic conditions from yesterday showed. The data indicated that the "downward trend is showing signs of moderating" in five of the Fed's 12 regions.

Furthermore, "several" regions indicate that their expectations of future business activity have improved, but there will not be a "substantial increase" through the end of the year. In the last survey, "several regions" indicated signs of some stability at low levels. Taken in whole, the assessments of businesses on the "front lines" of the economy appear slightly better than in the last report, which was issued in mid-April.

Over the past few years, the line between news and spin has grown thinner and thinner, to the point that it is no longer visible, even with the most advanced scientific instruments. In fact, according to most physicists, the line can only be detected by the infinitesimal gravitational pull that it seems to exert on surrounding particles, like faith in democracy, trust in authority figures, governmental accountability, and the inexplicable popularity of Perez Hilton. As a consequence, real-life causes and effects, decisionmakers and victims pale beside the far flashier waves that rustle through the covers of magazines and the ranks of the punditry. In the end, the past few presidents have demonstrated that truth is less important than "truthiness" and events are less important than titles.

In this spirit, the time has come to put a name on the economy's current crisis. As some talking heads have already noted, the Bush administration made a major mistake by allowing the term "bailout" to define the government's response to the economic meltdown. John McCain proposed the term "rescue," which sounds far more noble, while Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson suggested calling it the "Troubled Asset Relief Program," presumably hoping that a really boring title would make taxpayers forget about the issue. Using the same logic, petty thieves are now lobbying to have the term "pickpocketing" replaced with the monicker "involuntary, extralegal, above-market thigh massage."

The car manufacturers of Europe will ask for $55 billion in loan guarantees to upgrade their factories to build more fuel-efficient cars. The proposed arrangement looks a lot like the one just put together by the U.S. government and the Big Three American automakers.

According to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), "Fiat suggested the request to European auto executives at a board meeting of ACEA, the European Auto Makers Association on Friday."

Perhaps Japanese, Chinese, and Korean car companies can call for similar help, and the value of auto loan guarantees around the world can approach $200 billion.

While governments try to bear the burden of a worldwide financial meltdown, more and more struggling industries will ask for assistance. The airline industry may be next; it's being badly hurt by high fuel prices. Food companies may want aid because of rising commodities costs. Refiners are being hurt by high oil prices and may need a hand as well.

So, the question becomes, will governments decide which industries make it?

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

The New York Times reports that underneath the failure of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (NYSE: LEH) was a desire by its CEO to get more money for his company than the Korean Development Bank was willing to pay. The reason Richard Fuld wanted more was that he was in a state of denial about reality. And that's a common problem facing successful people all over -- one I call confirmation bias -- in which a decision-maker ignores information that is not consistent with his or her world view.

And that is the beauty of a system of free markets in which there is complete transparency of costs and benefits and participants win and lose on the merits of their strategies. Until this weekend, the government had been operating under a scheme of private profits and nationalized losses. In other words, the taxpayer footed the bill for those multi-million compensation packages for the executives who generated the losses.

But with the government's decision to let the private sector live with the consequences of its bad decisions, we are getting closer to a free market system. Such a system would create powerful incentives for a vigilant attitude towards rapidly changing reality by managers -- such as John Thain -- who could see that Merrill Lynch & Co.. (NYSE: MER) would follow in Lehman's footsteps absent a deal. And if we had a system that solved the five flaws in our financial architecture, we could truly benefit from a system of free markets in the future.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.