This is it, folks. This is the tsunami. Just remember who brought it to you: Bush, Blair and Howard.

ABC: Wall street "on the brink".

The Guardian: Wall Street's "model" is "broken".

The future of Wall Street is up for grabs -- and changing by the minute.

CNN: Wall Street's troubles are yours too:

The sale of Merrill and demise of Lehman would reduce the number of independent firms on Wall Street to two - Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) and Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500) - from five at the beginning of the year.

Remember, Goldman Sachs is the Bush gang's banker of choice. But even they are now looking shaky:

Analysts also question whether No. 1 investment bank Goldman Sachs Group , which has avoided major damage so far and earlier this year considered acquiring a commercial bank to reduce reliance on market funding, can confidently stand above the crowd.

Atrios notes that the 18th largest company in the world, insurance giant American International Group (AIG), is also on the brink of collapse if the Fed doesn't prop it up:

We're All Communists Now

...

It's all blowing up.

Exciting!!

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Alan "Don't Look At Me" Greenspan obviously isn't getting paid to lie any more:

"There's no question that this is in the process of outstripping anything I've seen and it still is not resolved and still has a way to go and, indeed, it will continue to be a corrosive force until the price of homes in the United States stabilizes. That will induce a series of events around the globe which will stabilize the system."

He adds that the USA cannot afford McCain's tax plans.

Meanwhile, back on Wall Street:

I'm standing outside Lehman Brothers (LEH, Fortune 500) headquarters on 7th Ave and 50th street in New York City watching Lehman Brothers die.

Employees, some in suits, others in casual clothes, are filing out with all they can carry as time runs out.

They are walking down the sidewalk past police barricades as scores of New Yorkers and tourists gawk...

URLS at my sig.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee ("creator of the World Wide Web") today tells the BBC he is "increasingly worried about the way the web has been used to spread disinformation".

He was talking specifically about the lies surrounding the Large Hadron Collider, but his concerns would apply even moreso if there was widespread panic in reaction to the global financial crisis.

And I am curious at the extent to which viral internet disinformation campaigns might be helping the McCain campaign, aside from whatever Big Media news organizations might be saying. I mean, if you have decided to run on lies, the Web is certainly an appealing avenue of propaganda.

An Australian journalist wrote a great book about Greenspan and his missing 7 trillion dollars, "The Bubble Man".

Greenspan's retreat from the critical position he staked in 1996, in the face of political opposition and public mania, earns him a decisive share of responsibility for the bubble and its consequences.

The link at my sig includes a lengthy dissing of the book from WaPo, those denizens of verisimilitude.

What I want to know is what the hell Palin meant when she said she "didn't blink" when asked about accepting the nomination...

She just spent over a week in intensive GOP brainwashing and the main point they kept repeating over and over was that YOU MUST NOT BLINK whenever we give you an order. She thinks it's a badge of honor. Sad.

Sorry, meant to add a link to Justin Raimondo today:

Gee, I wish Charlie Gibson had asked her about Vanunu. He would've gotten a blank stare, but you can be sure her neoconservative handlers would have briefed her afterward and given her the Correct Line, which would doubtless be the same answer she gave Gibson when he asked her about giving the green light to Israel to strike Iran.

"I don't think we can second guess what Israel has to do to secure its nation. "

She said that no less than three times, repeating the same formulaic answer almost word-for-word, as if she'd had it drilled into her head by AIPAC lobbyists and the sinister Bill Kristol for hours, even weeks, beforehand – which, it turns out, she had.

Link, sig, etc.