Wall Street

This makes perfect sense:

"The weak will be eaten. The strong will emerge stronger. It's Darwin. It's Adam Smith. The market will grow healthier from this pruning. The business is cyclical and blah, blah, blah. Cover your ears. You will be hearing it all week as people try to make sense of what's happened during the past 72 hours.

But the death of Lehman and the panic it has ignited on Wall Street underscores another truth: When it comes down to it, you're on your own, suckers. Investors have always been the ones to take on risks. Wall Street firms just like to profit from them.

It's the same lesson we learned in the stock market panics of 1907, 1929 and 1987; the scandals at Standard Oil, Drexel Burnham Lambert, Long-Term Capital Management and so many more.

Where did it go wrong? We kept giving them our money."


David Weidner

(Weidner covers Wall Street for MarketWatch.)