Book ‘Em By Andrew C. McCarthy

America is holding its collective breath today. The Bush administration made the gutsy decision late last Friday to say enough is enough: There will be no Bear Stearns-style rescue for Lehman Brothers, which is teetering on the brink of failure. This time, a venerable brokerage firm, a pillar of the financial sector for well over a century, will be allowed to fail.

The decision is certain to send the markets reeling until a new, more transparent equilibrium is found. Already reverberations are rocking Wall Street. Lehman appears headed for bankruptcy. Still viable but ailing, Merrill Lynch, the domino otherwise likely to fall next, is selling itself to Bank of America for $44 billion. As the Wall Street Journal editors aptly observed this morning, even as Wall Street is being “remade,” we are “getting a Category 5 test of our financial levees.”

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