Who Murdered Bear Stearns?

Vanity Fair has an intriguing article on what may (if anyone ever investigates it) become the "greatest financial crime ever committed": And it may have been pre-meditated. A really intense story, where you know the ending but just have to understand how it went down.

It doesn't go into whether the Fed, etc. was right in propping up Bear Stearns (the Economist had some good pro-con articles on whether it's ok to allow banks to fail shortly after it happened - but I haven't tracked them down yet) ... but that's a question for another day. The "run" on the bank, fueled by malice or rumor is a good reminder that most of our institutions (the Courts, the Congress, Wall Street) are very fragile for no other reason than - at the very top levels - they are held together by mutual trust and understanding between people. When that breaks down, the "institution" itself isn't enough to hold it together without consent of the people involved.