I pretty much agree with Nathan Oman:
… I have to confess that the fall of a major financial institution puts me in a down right jaunty mood.
Sure, the markets already have lost 3%, but what makes me happy is the news that Lehman Brothers threw itself at the knees of the Fed and the Treasury Department over the week end, and Berneke and Paulson looked on in stoney indifference. At last, it would seem, capitalism is going to do what capitalism is supposed to do: Punish those who make bad investment choices. Hopefully, we are in for a bit of short term pain while markets find their bottom and the dead and dying are taken out behind the barn to be shot. On the other hand, once the carnage is over those with money to loan, invest, and spend — and there are lots of them — will come out from hiding in their bunkers with the knowledge that we’ve unwound the risk, and a market that has learned something about the valuation of credit derivatives can move forward. To be sure, the landscape will be utterly changed, but that had to happen any way. Better this way than through a long, slow, expensive process of bailing out the super-rich. This is bad for the financial markets and the real economy may take a hit as well. It is good, however, I think for the long-term political health of capitalism.
I also agree with Tyler. Felix Salmon correctly scores the responses of the McCain and Obama campaigns to the Lehman collapse, though every time Salmon says “more” about regulation replace with “better.”