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As I frantically leaf through the daily dispatches from the killing fields of Wall Street and count the mounting casualties of American capitalism's formerly invincible totems, one haunting thought repeats itself.
Referring to a similarly tumultuous period in Hawaiian history, the iconic American novelist James Michener described the series of cataclysmic events on the islands as "a time when the gods changed."
No lesser concept can encompass the massacre of Wall Street's bulls and the defenestration of the men and women who considered themselves masters of the universe and displaying a fearful arrogance that knew no bounds.
By any standard, the current upheaval in American society — economic, political and psychic — is unparalleled in recent times.
A trader on the New York Stock Exchange ponders his next move. (AP)
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Unlike the Great Depression of the 1930s, legions of regulators were already in place this time, charged with preventing exactly what happened.
Investors will not feel the same, or be the same, at the end of this mother of all stock market corrections.
The fraudulent overvaluation of questionable assets was less an individual crime than the common assumption of Wall Street's most successful players.
During 10 dark September days, $5-trillion in assets of the most prestigious financial institutions of the United States turned into ashes. Canada, with its staid but highly fallible banks, will be shaken, too.
The invisible hand that once governed investment decisions turned out to be attached to a malevolent magician's sleeve, whose trick was to make money disappear.
We are witnessing the dismantling of the viscera of American capitalism. Investors can no longer accept capitalism's disciples on trust.
First came the shock, with many of the continent's bedrock brokerage houses and merchant banks proving to be as destructible as the soap bubbles kids blow to ward off boredom.
Then came the anger: Who were these riverboat gamblers who had put at risk not just their own reputations but those of their firms, the credibility of the stock exchanges and their clients' pocketbooks, and the viability of the system itself?
And why did the countervailing forces of reform and corporate governance go along with the carnival that turned Wall Street into an abattoir?
The only member of that wild tribe I knew even slightly was one of its wildest: Michael Milken, who reigned as Wall Street's junk-bond king in the 1980s, regularly earning $700-million in annual commissions.
"Morality and legality became mere conventions to him, accepted modes of behaviour for the less creative, the less aggressive, the less visionary," wrote Connie Bruck in The Predators' Ball.
"Milken's firm was the brass-knuckles, threatening, market-manipulating Cosa Nostra of the securities world."
(Mr. Milken was a perfectionist, even when it came to hiding his baldness. He bought 30 wigs, each with slightly longer hair to simulate natural growth and wore them daily until the end of each month, when he pretended to get a haircut.)
He eventually went to jail and was fined $200-million (and double that in settlement payments to shareholders), but his legacy abides. He became a role model for future profiteers and the Wall Street operators who, like Gordon Gekko, the buccaneer in Oliver Stone's epic film Wall Street, boasted about having had an ethical bypass at birth.
While Mr. Milken eventually paid the price, most of his current disciples, squeezing credit ratings beyond their breaking point, ran their firms into bankruptcy while rewarding themselves with obscene exit bonuses.
Richard Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers, which set off the avalanche, left his desk after getting 2007 compensation of $22-million, not including what he had gathered by selling Lehman stock before it became wallpaper.
Mr. Milken's junk-bond caper was followed by the savings-and-loan swindles, the high-tech/Internet bubble and now the subprime crisis, which is the most toxic yet.
After all the ditzy, pay-us-back-when-you-feel-like-it mortgages floated by American banks had diluted real values, there wasn't much credit left, and most banks have been unable or unwilling to assist their victims. Washington's $700-billion bailout will help in the same way that a Band-Aid momentarily calms a fresh wound.
CANADA WILL BE SHAKEN
Slowly, much too slowly, the realization has dawned that the belief system that allowed Canadians to industrialize the brooding, silent and inaccessible land of our fathers and grandfathers will need to be reinvented.
What we need is new gods, freshly minted mentors motivated by values as the source of their experience — instead of experience as the source of their values.
