New Game, New Rules

Earlier this week, I was thinking about what might qualify as the five most important events in my lifetime. I came up with the following list, which perhaps reflects my personal perspective on the world more than anything else:

1. Cuban Missile Crisis (I was born a little after JFK was inaugurated, so I can’t go back much further in time than this)
2. 9/11
3. Passage of the Civil Rights Act
4. Falling of the Berlin Wall / Breakup of Soviet Union
5. Nixon’s Resignation / Watergate

Not quite making the cut were the first moon landing and moon walk, the creation of the internet, and various other advances in science and technology.

I had wondered if the events of this week would make it on that list. While it is too early to tell, my initial gut reaction is that if the financial markets had a constitution, we have essentially just ripped it up and declared martial law. Things may meander back toward the way they used to be, but I don’t think the markets will ever be the same going forward, given what has just transpired, regardless of what the consequences turn out to be.

Many have written eloquently about recent events, but there are three posts from this morning that I wish to highlight:

• Ron Sen at Technically Speaking pulled together a “partial list of entities responsible for the financial mess” in Puff the Magic Dragon
  
  
• David Merkel at The Aleph Blog outlines some of the effects of eliminating short sales in Government Policy Created too Hastily
  
  
• Adam Warner at Daily Options Report details some of the ways that investors can still make bearish bets, without the benefit of shorting in Quick Expiration and Bearish Bet Primer