panic, not at the disco, on Wall St.

I suspect LinkedIn is seeing a spike in activity from some (ex-)Wall Streeters this week. (Yes Jack, I'll updat my profile eventually.) That's right Lehman, your storied history has been trumped by your sub par management. Tragically, your management was only slightly less stellar than that of Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Countrywide (that's right Mozilo, we didn't forget your role in this disasterpiece), and Washington Mutual. It's a good thing my money with WaMu is federally insured, but only for as long as the US government is solvent. You mean it's not solvent? (feigns surprise)

If anything, Lehman wasn't necessarily the most poorly run of the aforementioned all stars, they simply weren't big enough to win a bail out. My favorite financial blogger, Barry Ritholtz, ran through the the lessons learned from Bear Stears and why some earn their way (read: stumble) into a bailout while others are less vampirish. I think this sentence says it best, "Don't just risk your company, risk the entire world of Finance. Modest incompetence is insufficient -- if you merely destroy your own company, you won't get rescued. You have to threaten to bring down the entire global financial system." And now with what used to be the thirteenth biggest company (as a function of revenue) in America on the cusp of a conservatorship, it looks like we've decided to become socialists. Hurray? Or is it Hooray?

We just need to ask who's going to be next in line for a handout. No, we don't have to wait since it looks like it's going to be the automakers. I would've guessed airlines, but I can only assume that they were too busy figuring out how to continue to lose their latest loans. In all fairness, the airlines are doing what they should have done several years ago: cut routes, cut service, raise rates, charge for incidentals, and fly slower. Airlines going out of business is good for the industry. Sure it's bad for consumers and I don't like it since I fly more than the average person, though much less than any road warrior, but it is necessary. It would have been a good thing to see a major automaker go out of business too. Damn you Cerberus, why did you buy Chrysler? (I bet Nardelli is going to have just as much success running that ship as he did with Home Depot. And who knew Dan Quayle was part of that group. Weirdness.)

Back to the the financial debacle that is rapidly sinking this country. What happened? What should we do? And why are all the proposed solutions going to suck more than normal because it is an election year?

Some people want to circle back to housing and blame this on the collapse in the housing market and how it's pulling down the value of CDOs and other investments and et cetera. Damnit, that's so wrong. It's right in the sense that housing appears to have been the trigger, but it doesn't really address the root cause of the problem.

We're the problem. America has become complacent, allowing itself to be run by people of less than stellar moral fiber and we seem to implicitly accept this as sound management. Why was housing ever as expensive as it was? Why did people think it could only go up? How and why were people able to purchase (I use that term very loosely) houses with no-money down, in fact, paying even less than the interest on the mortgage? Why was so much stacked upon so little? Why do people think that they can get rich quick, have a free lunch, have their cake and eat it too?

My friend Jack is right. We should be angry. Actually, we should be pissed off. Perhaps I've been listening to too much anti-capitalist, angry, Flobots music (but it is really good and seems to fit so well right now). Damn, it's late and I'm getting up early. More anger coming.