teral investments that include mortgage-backed securities, a tainted product that should be consigned to a bonfire of the vanities. If this was not a desperate act, we do not know what would qualify. Why is not the Fed or the US government letting rotten fruit drop? Would letting Bear Stearns pass into history precipitate a chain reaction of financial failures that will spread to Europe and Asia? A hundred experts asked this will offer a hundred different scenarios. It is granted the Fed would not want to stare into the abyss. Granted, too, that financial regulators and governments elsewhere are more relieved than questioning about the moral hazard issue.

The one issue that needs addressing badly, besides remedial measures, is what has brought about the weakened state of American financial institutions. Until recently, no one had heard of CDOs (collateralised debt obligations). Now, they are attaining the status of a plague. The evidence is self-revealing: greed. The most elegant mathematical mind would be impressed. How did Wall Street's financial engineers dream up investible instruments from humdrum debt like property loans and credit card portfolios? How did the peddlers manage to get other banks and big institutional funds to buy securities that are hard to value? The pull is greed. Wall Street's reward system has been based on instant demonstrable performance in quarterly profit. CEOs and heads of trading divisions rise or fall on their creativity in pushing out products that will bring exponential profits. The industry should ponder whether unrestrained reward-giving is harming it, even as it provides the creative stimulus. The US Congress has called for evidence from Wall Street captains to explain how they could accept tens of millions in 'compensation' while shareholders suffer billions in losses from writedowns of exotic investments. A fair question. How it is dissected or ignored could determine if lessons are learnt from this crisis - if it does not consume the world first.