Bingo.

From NYTimes:

“Those who were complaining, only months ago, that excessive regulation was making American markets uncompetitive, had it exactly wrong. It was a lack of regulation of the shadow financial system and its players that allowed this to happen. The regulators might not have gotten it right if they had tried to put limits on leverage, or assure that it was clear what risks were being taken, in the world of derivatives and securitizations. But deciding not to even try, and assuming that risks traded secretly would somehow end up in the hands of those most able to bear them, reflected ideology, not analysis.”

“Just create a crappy bank to take all the crap.”

An option that Lehman Brothers is considering. 

It seems obvious that they’re going to have to do something – credit default swaps for Lehman are rising, and a secret effort to attract a sale to Chinese or Korean investors failed.   

A lot of this NEEDS to be taken with a grain of salt. Lehman has long been rumored to be the next Bear Stearns, and such fires only need so much gasoline:  a recent Vanity Fair story highlights the momentum and potentially deliberate manipulation of rumors surrounding Bear Stearns prior to its collapse.  A pretty great read.