LEHMAN BROS. WAS HERE: “One sad stretch of dusty road has seven vacant houses in a row, nobody around for a mile on either side. Where did they go? Who even owns the mortgages, if the mortgages could even be pieced together from the ‘collaterized debt instruments’ that brought down everything from mighty Wall Street investment houses to chickenshit little construction firms in the grandly named Inland Empire?” [LA CityBeat]

It’s not really a factor, but then again OK, it is a HUGE factor, to keep in mind the type of horrific douchecocks that this bailout would keep in business most immediately. Your associate editor recently graduated with an English degree from a college known mostly for its business school and watched many of his… “colleagues” blindly take “safe” & high-paying & evil jobs at Lehman, Merrill Lynch, etc., and has been SO AMAZINGLY HAPPY to watch so many of them lose these same jobs recently. It’s absolutely the best part of this crisis. Because check out what this still-employed Merrill Lynch-cum-Bank of America person has to say: “I was in denial. You see, Merrill has a much better repuation than a commercial bank like Bank of America. I was shocked I would be joining a lower-tier commercial bank. There’s a feeling, ‘I didn’t go through this whole interview process to work at a commercial bank.’” This is the standard. So how about we only bail out these companies if they agree to fire all of their remaining shitsack employees, hmm? [IvyGate]

Hey look everyone, it’s more “clowns in bear costumes” consoling each other after Lehman Brothers fell, by making out, and that’s why John Kerry will lose again. Oh wait, what is this thing we’re posting? Ah yes, the Walnuts video. [YouTube]