the difference between 1929 and 2008

The difference between today's financial crisis and 1929's is that stockbrokers who contributed to the '29 crash jumped from serious buildings such as the Irving Trust and Woolworth's and other skyscrapers and wound up, 30 floors down, jam on the sidewalk. Whereas the hedge fund geniuses who got us into today's mess leap from snazzy office/fitness centers in Greenwich and Stamford and, two stories down, suffer a sprained ankle on the manicured lawn. A few months later, their "injury" long healed, their money-market reserves intact, they will score another $350,000 per annum job; while the people whose 401(k)s full of AIG shares evaporated in the meltdown face a retirement in financial freefall.

Or maybe the difference is that the 1929 version of financier retained a 19th century sense of moral hazard--whereas the morals of the modern version are so arbitraged, and program-swamped, and reinsured, that these derivative desperadoes stand as much chance of feeling personally responsible for anything as they do of losing their shirt.