Investor's Business Daily: No Need to Panic

Sen. Barack Obama predicts another Great Depression unless we elect him president, but for a saner view of the current Wall Street financial meltdown, let's visit Investor's Business Daily.

The newspaper says the current crisis involving Lehman Bros. and Merrill Lynch is not without precedent.

From an editorial in today's edition:

Old timers will recall F.I. DuPont or Goodbody & Co. Not-so-old timers remember E.F. Hutton and Kidder Peabody. Now we can add Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros. to the storied names that have fallen.

We drop these names (and we could have mentioned a hundred more) for two reasons: (1) to remind readers that this isn't the first time an investment bank or brokerage has gone under, and (2) to point out that the country has always survived and grown.

In fact, what's happening now is quite normal in a financial system characterized by booms that lead to excesses that then require corrections before any renewal takes place. We'd be hard-pressed to remember a bear market when one or more financial firms didn't go out of business.

Read the full editorial, "This Too Will Pass," at the newspaper's Web site.