These moments always come in business - the moment where you look into that dark abyss and ask yourself, do I try and catch the falling knife? Is Lehman Brothers (LEH) going the way of Bear Stearns (BSC) or will it survive its current liquidity plight? It is that moment in time where the phrase “gut check” comes to mind. 

Let’s look at this current situation with Lehman pragmatically, while taking out some of the hyperbole and emotion. Any “rally” in this market is nothing more than an intermediate term bear rally (personal opinion). The facts are that the market has a severe liquidity crisis caused by the rapid melt down of these pools of “stuff” called CDOs or CMOs or SIVs, basically a bad alphabet soup. This meltdown was exacerbated by the leverage used with the top tier bulge bracket investment banking houses in order to enhance their yield.