“No one knows how much worse things will get, how much further the market will fall, or when things will turn. And you should not trust anyone who says they do know.”  (WSJ.com)

The old Wall Street is dead.  Long live the new Wall Street.  (NYTimes.com)

Commercial banks, and their more stable funding bases, are the new kings of finance.  (Slate.com, WSJ.com)

The underlying problem with the newly consolidated financial supermarkets.  (Marginal Revolution)

Is the pressure on Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS) to find a dance partner?  (Market Movers)

Merrill Lynch (MER):  bargain, not a bargain?  (Deal Journal, The Big Money, Mish)

The boutique investment bank is back, as survivors are picking up investment banking talent in the wake of the Lehman bankruptcy.  (Information Arbitrage,TheDeal.com)

Aspiring investment bankers may now look to do something real with their lives, like engineering or start-ups.  (Real TIme Economics, leavewallstreetjoinastartup.com, Epicurean Dealmaker)

Lehman finds a buyer…a couple days too late.  (DealBreaker.com)

“[Fuld] simply couldn’t face the reality that his firm wasn’t worth what he thought it was.”  (NYTimes.com)

Where was Lehman’s board?  (Deal Journal)

The core business at AIG (AIG) is healthy, but the market disagrees.  (Bronte Capital, Market Movers, DealBreaker.com)

The bond market just got a great deal less liquid.  (FT Alphaville, MarketBeat)

Implied volatilities are “utterly exploding.”  (Daily Options Report)

Bloomberg LP stands to lose as Wall Street shrinks.  (DealBook)

The cash markets are in a tizzy.  (FT Alphaville, Market Movers)

A 50% retracement of the past bull market.  (Big Picture, Bespoke Investment Group, Afraid to Trade)

Why hasn’t gold rallied more?  (MarketBeat)

How the stock market gets risk right, as opposed to the credit markets.  (Curious Capitalist)

Lessons from the “lost decade” in the stock market.  (Morningstar.com)

If you had any doubts about a recession, think again.  (Econbrowser)

Wasn’t Sarbanes-Oxley supposed to save us from this sort of mess?  (Crossing Wall Street)

A defense of derivatives.  (Free exchange)

Another investment bank blows up.  Time for a Nassim Taleb essay.  (Edge.org via EconLog)

Traffic to econoblogs explodes.  (Big Picture)

A list of recommended econblogs from the world of politics.  (Politico.com)

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