Joshua 6:20-21: So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.


And time respects no person--what you lift up must fall
They're waiting outside to claim my tumblin' walls
Saw my picture in the paper, read the news around my face
And now some people don't want to treat me the same
When the walls come tumblin' down
When the walls come crumblin' crumblin'
When the walls come tumblin' tumblin' down
- John Mellencamp

It wasn't the sound of trumpets, it was the sound of bells. By the time trading closed on Monday, Wall St. had lost 504 points. What was once a mighty Wall made of solid bricks like Merrill-Lynch became the rubble of an economy in deep trouble as those inside, thinking themselves safe, looked aghast at the wreckage. The Wall was made of solid bricks, but because of greed, the builders had stopped using mortar to hold it all together.

We had seen the Wall fall once before and wanted to ensure that it stood solid. The Glass-Steagall act of 1933 was created to ensure that those who worked on rebuilding the Wall used mortar to ensure the weak bricks were held in place by the strong bricks. For decades, the Wall held strong and all was well. But for some, the rewards were not enough. Some wanted to cast aside the requirements, forgetting the lessons of the past, and let the builders decide how much mortar to use.

And thus, the the demise began when the act was neutered in 1999. The companies wanted to use wire and chewing gum (credit) to hold the Wall together. Rather than stand in the way of "progress", this was allowed to happen. A kingdom that always prided itself on quality became a kingdom that allowed the Wall to become a flimsy caricature of itself so that some could reap a mighty profit.

It could not stand and it did not. There were rumblings at first as the Wall swayed and began to buckle. First, the Bear-Sterns section toppled. Next, the housing bubble that held up so much of the Wall began losing bricks at a faster and faster rate. The King stood inside the Wall and begged the people not to panic. Many people were hurt by these falling bricks and were left homeless as the bricks forced them to flee. But the King pointed to all those still in their homes and declared there really wasn't a problem.

People tried to keep working and getting by, constantly casting a wary eye at the Wall, watching it sway dangerously in the wind, waiting for the next cascade. Some people losing money as the wall crumbled thought that The Oil could make them more money, so they tried to prop up the Wall with barrels of oil. But the people rebelled and their shouts caused the Wall to crumble even more as The Oil turned out to be an equally poor substitute for the mortar.

The King tried to help out by propping up sections of the Wall that seemed to be salvagable. But this required borrowing money from neighboring kingdoms, and the King was already deep in debt. The borrowing just made the King's gold worth less. This didn't hurt the King and the rich members of the court as much as it did the common folk in the town, who often had to choose between food and wood for their fires.

The weakend Wall finally fell with a crash as once venerable bricklaying companies like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Merrill-Lynch, Lehman Brothers, and AIG found themselves out of business. The bewildered townspeople looked at the pile of broken bricks and wondered: what would protect them now and in their old age?

The Court Jester chosen by the King's supporters to be his successor railed against the bricklayers, and declared that rules must be created to ensure they used proper mortar, as the evil wizard who destroyed the regulations in 1999 declared the townspeople to be whiners, all the while pulling the strings that made the Jester dance.

There was one young man in the crowd that was not a member of the King's court who declared he could fix the wall, but it would mean the rich patrons of the king would have to help more, and the regulations that ensured a well-constructed wall would have to be reinstituted and enforced. The people rallied behind him as he declared that he would be a better king than the Jester.

The people looked at the fallen Wall, and they looked at the Jester, and they looked at the young man, and they decided....

... to be continued on Nov 5th...