It's Not Easy Being Green.....

No, but it's a lot easier than being red, relentlessly, repeatedly, red. In the interest of making the complex easier to understand, I found this small explanation of what is happening with the take overs or bankruptcies of three of the biggest firms on Wall Street.

• Lehman Brothers was like the little kid pulling the tail of a dog. You know the kid is going to get hurt eventually, and so no one is surprised when the dog turns around and bites the kid. But the kid only hurts himself, so no one really cares that much.

• Bear Stearns is the little pyro -- the kid who was always playing with matches. He could harm not only himself, but burns his own house down, and indeed, he could have burnt down the entire neighborhood. The Fed stepped in not to protect him, but the rest of the block.

• AIG is the kid who accidentally stumbled into a bio-tech warfare lab . . . finds all these unlabeled vials, and heads out to the playground with a handful of them jammed into his pockets.

John Barnyak