I don't know much about what's going on with Lehman Bros. or Merrill Lynch, only what I heard on the news this morning. I'm sort of sentimental about the big Wall Street investment banks. My dad worked for Merrill in the 1980s and then went on to a consulting business where his clients were the investment banks. I grew up hearing about his schedule: Donaldson Lufkin Jenrette, Swiss Bank, Shearson Lehman, they were all names I heard over the dinner table.
And now they're falling. It feels like the continuation of 9/11. That day Wall Street started to tumble and the rubble landed around the
man in
Liberty Plaza. And now the firms are failing and falling. The New York of my childhood recedes further into history.