Canary in the Wall Street coalmine - Economist "The fall of Bear Stearns": "The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 will probably go down as the single most spectacular event in the humbling of Wall Street. But it was the near-collapse of Bear Stearns, six months earlier, that first exposed the fragility of America’s seemingly mighty investment banks, perched atop mountains of debt and dangerously reliant on short-term funding. And it was Bear that brought the first serious reminder, after years of excess, of Walter Bagehot’s dictum that if you have to prove you are worthy of credit, your credit is already gone."