On the surface, the Lehman's bankruptcy is sexy news, but there's more going on too.
The stock market is just fleshing out what's already going on in real world markets. There's your value at the end of the day. It was squandered a year ago with the loads of bad subprime loans that went out. It was only a matter of time before they all started defaulting, and the spike in oil price just compounded the problem.
What you get with the stock market, in these kinds of situations where there isn't a growing business but just risk and payoff (commodities, insurance, loans...), the supply-demand finally sets the value. All the buyers and sellers are doing is betting on the risk of supply, buyers that it later goes down, sellers that it later goes up. Then the supply works itself out in the real world, and the market just fleshes it out.
In the case of oil, it was China's unforeseeable insane increase in demand that seriously diminished the supply (oil companies couldn't/wouldn't meet it); commodity buyers made a ton of money and the price of oil got pushed sky-high. But they weren't the ones actually doing the pushing. Blame oil companies and China communicating for that.
In the case of the subprime loans, it was the loads of defaults that killed demand for the value of those loans. Some early sellers might have made a little (or rather, didn't lose as much), and pushed the value so low we see the results now (and now some buyers cleaning up the mess; they're gaining something, yes, but something riddled with liabilities too, and they also bear indirect losses.). But the "value" was in taking an incredibly irresponsible risk in the first place that wasn't properly hedged. Pretty much everybody loses on this one.
That is, it may be zero-sum for traders, buyers and sellers betting on risk ... but it's not zero-sum for the market as a whole. Supply-demand ultimately sets the value, and when the people in control of that act irresponsibly, against their own interest, it screws everybody else as well.
That's why caring about your own long-term interest matters in a capitalist system. If you get selfish for an irresponsible quick payoff (or rather, you're not selfish enough for a greater longterm gain), you don't just hurt yourself but everybody else as well. That goes for the oil companies, China, defaulting homeowners, and the banks ... every one of these groups can be accused of getting irresponsibly greedy, taking a stupid risk and screwing their own best interests, and taking all of us down with them.
(In comparison, if there hadn't been an open market, all of this would have occurred behind closed doors and the fallout couldn't have been hedged or fleshed out at all, and then you could get an absolute market breakdown ... it takes months for the oil supply to even start flowing again because they can't get capital, and banks topple one after another to cover a runaway of defaults.)
So what do I think? Its a good thing in my opinion. Happily though, my position at HSBC is strong - i'm in the M&A business and as a bank HSBC are doing good; we have a ridiculously strong position in the eastern/asian countries so are suitably hedged. However I still feel sorry for the poor buggers over at Lehman's who I saw leaving their office on Monday morning. But hey, that's Capitalism for you
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