It's been ten years since Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and the global financial system melted down. It was the moment the world woke up to the fact that something was very, very wrong. But have we learned our lessons? CGTN's John Terrett reports from New York.

September 2008 – just ten years ago – but in many ways a lifetime away.

There were rumors something was wrong in the U.S. housing market. A handful of economists spoke up, but their warnings were mostly ignored.

In March 2008, the investment bank Bear Stearns went under.

But things really began to hit home on September 15th, 2008 when the financial services company Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection and the world suddenly realized some banks and big corporations were being less than truthful about the health of their balance sheets—and a global financial meltdown was in the offing.

JOHN TERRETT NEW YORK "And this is where it all began. 49th Street and Seventh Avenue. This is the building that used to house Lehman Brothers. It's Barclays now, but I remember thinking to myself at the time, the government will never let Lehman go. It's too big. How wrong can you be?"

Peter Tuchman Quattro M. Securities "I need you to know, there was anxiety. There was fear and there was doom. For about a year here, it changed the whole flora of the financial industry. The next day there were people walking around with boxes leaving work. 25,000-plus people lost their jobs. Did I know that the day I was trading Lehman, no!"

Bankers were selling what were known as sub-prime mortgages to people – many in poorer neighborhoods – failing to explain that the interest rates would double after two years.

The sub-prime loans were sliced up, bundled with good ones, and sold to banks and governments around the world as investments called Collateralized Debt Obligations – and within those – it was impossible to know what was good debt and what was bad.

Banks like Lehman gorged themselves on these risky assets, thinking their potential losses would be covered by a type of insurance called Credit Default Swaps—a big mistake.

Within weeks Congress passed the TARP – the Troubled Asset Relief Program – a massive bailout by the U.S. Treasury to prop up banks, stabilize the financial system and restore economic growth.

Ten years on, what's changed to prevent a similar crisis from happening again?

Peter Tuchman Quattro M Securities "No, I don't see it happening now. I don't see it happening here. I think people are a little more transparent now. I think the market with all the potential anxiety over the last couple of years –in particular, we're still at 26,000 – the market tells you what it thinks about what's going on. This is real money in real time."

But, at New Jersey Citizen Action, financial justice advocate Beverly Brown Ruggia, is not quite so optimistic.

Beverly Brown Ruggia New Jersey Citizen Action "The Dodd- Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was passed after the crash and it included a provision to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, specifically charged with protecting the little guy. Unfortunately, the leadership in Washington and the administration and the new director don't really believe in that mission. They're no longer putting the little guy above the interests of industry."

John Terrett, CGTN, New York.