Lehman goes under, Merrill sold for a song. The weekly Sunday slaughter on Wallstreet continues.

Lehman is being allowed to fail instead of bailed out, score one for moral hazard, and that won't affect individual Americans as much as if it were FRE/FNM, which actually are too big to fail.

Yet, the concerning part, I can't find any press or research on the actual market value of CDO's. When Lehman's CDO's are sold at market, suddenly other financial companies have a way to value their own hand-wavy balance sheets and that's what scares me. Day of reckoning. Sunlight-as-disinfectant is a great idea and is what we need for the long term, but I do fear actually living through that process, and am glad the industry I work in is education, a bit removed from the greater turmoil.

Also, there are still big lending institutions that have yet to go under but appear to be teetering: Wachovia and WaMu. And, AIG, the insurance company, is pretty much insolvent and now has permission to borrow from itself to continue operating. That's insanity. I bet one of those 3 companies is in the news next Sunday as being forced under or into acquisition. And another the week after that.

"They can make a bridge loan to themselves" - Gov Patterson, about AIG. Sign of times during the Bank-apocalypse?

If it turns out the Bank of America was allowed to fund their purchase of Merrill with treasury funds secured against CDO's, I really will have lost all faith in the market personally. It's gotten down to glorified check kiting. (Update - supposedly a stock swap, so maybe this fear is unfounded?)

The over all derivatives market is something like $100 trillion dollars in the US , and granted most of that is never going to see the light of day or be made actual, but can any person honestly understand the effects of four levels of chopped and diced risk? Institutions clearly can't. Our elected representatives surely don't. I don't! Maybe we need some restraints on how imaginary investments can get before they're plain old fraud. 2nd order derivation is about where I lose my ability to follow along, and I'm a fairly smart guy.

So, what it means, as I see it: no more living on credit for Americans as individuals or as a nation. It's going to hurt. I have a feeling that I won't be able to buy a home until I save 20% of the purchase price, like back in the good old days.

Why? Not letting 2001 become a real get-rid-of-the-deadwood recession, but instead injecting insane cash into the system, and letting real estate values build up to soak up the liquidity and prop up the economy, because it had nowhere else to go but overseas. Financial markets were deregulated, allowing investment banks to merge with regular banks, removing firewalls and independence and creating bizarre shadow world markets that are magnitudes larger in notional dollar value then the stock market. For the last 30 years, our economic measuring tools have been made worthless by presidents of both parties, making the situation seem less dire then it actually is, inflating or hiding information to make themselves look good. Also, a half trillion dollar war in Iraq didn't help.

I do not see a soft landing in store for us, and am glad I have another 35 years to be able to save up money to retire at some point.