Uh......

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." (T. S. Eliot)

Perhaps.....but then again, try asking those poor souls recently employed by or invested in Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, AIG and Washington Mutual.

Adieu L'ancien Regime

Plucked from off the front page of the Weekend Edition of the WSJ today:

"For financial institutions, 'the clock is ticking a heck of a lot faster today,' said Matthew Kelley, a bank analyst at investment banking firm Sterne, Agee and Leach, Inc...".

So it's come to this: the days of quoting banking analysts at the storied investment banks (Goldman, Morgan Stanley etc....) are now gone forever. We are left to quote the obscure; no offense meant to the good people at Sterne, Agee and Leach. Wow......if ever you needed a handy way to measure the magnitude of change on the Street!

It's almost like the extinction of the dinosaurs.....when the giants that utterly dominated the landscape suddenly disappear; the furry, little brown mammals- so long trampled underfoot emerge timorously into the daylight- without fear of being squashed or eaten, to forage amidst the detritus, and pick up where the leviathans left off. Adieu l'ancien regime.