U.S. officials appeared to have made a policy decision not to bail out Lehman Brothers, the head of a panel investigating the financial crisis said Wednesday, challenging the view of regulators that they had no legal authority to help. The comments lent support to former Lehman Chairman Richard Fuld’s contention that the Federal Reserve and Treasury could have done more to prevent his firm’s 2008 bankruptcy, which hastened the worst global recession since World War Two. “It seems to me that over a period of months what ends up being made is a conscious policy decision not to rescue the entity,” said Phil Angelides, chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.