As a Congressional panel reviewed the collapse of Lehman Brothers, regulators, bankers and the U. S. financial system received shares of blame in Washington.

The investment bank's collapse was "another massive corporate failure," that "reveals that Wall Street executives continued to embellish the truth, tell half-truths and hide behind their power in the marketplace," Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., said in an opening statement at a House Financial Services hearing.

The autopsy of Lehman Brothers compiled by Anton Valukas showed regulators "failed to uncover wrongdoing, mismanagement, and capital shortfalls even as they fiddled in Lehman's offices." Kanjorski further said.

Lehman Brothers was "both a case study and a cautionary tale of what can only be described as a gross regulatory failure," Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., said.

He also said that regulations already in place, "simply were not utilized."

The financial meltdown represented a systems failure, U. S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said.

He further said that as an investment bank, Lehman Brothers was "able to escape consolidated supervision because of its corporate form."

He blamed executives who pay "little attention to the risk of long-term loss" and on unregulated instruments like derivatives that operate "largely in the dark without oversight."

He also added, "Our financial system allowed risk to move towards areas where regulations were most lenient." (With Inputs from Agencies)