How The Mighty Fall

The twin towers fell again on 9/15. The reporters had a field day coining headlines such as “Lehman Lynched” and "Nightmare on Wall Street" as Lehman Brothers went belly up and Merrill Lynch had to sell itself. Lehman’s bankruptacy wasn’t a surprise for anyone following what’s been happening on the Wall Street. But Merrill came as a nasty surprise. And then there was AIG which fortunately was thrown a lifeline by the US Fed.

I am sure the most searched for items on the net these days would be “subprime”, “CDO”, “CDS” and Derivatives (Warren Buffet seems like a prophet now because he had already described them as weapons of mass financial destruction!). I am no exception and must confess that I now regret sleeping through my Options and Futures class in the B school days. How I long to go back.

One article summed it best when it said that the reaction world over swings between the two – glee at the fall of the so-called “Masters of the Universe” and an uneasy fear over what wreakage the tsunami that hit the Wall Street will cause closer home.

I guess when the dust finally does settle, there should be a movie on this bloodbath titled “Wall S” :-)