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The 9/11 of financial services. The subprime mortgage mess is being compared to another attack on Americans (Investment News):

The financial sector cut 35,752 jobs in August — the highest one-month total for the field in 14 years — as mortgage and subprime lenders collapsed this summer.

Overall U.S. job cuts increased 85% between July and August, with nearly half of the those layoffs coming from financial firms, a study from Challenger Gray & Christmas Inc. found. [...] Eighty-six percent of these came from the mortgage/ subprime area.

At 102,758 layoffs this year, the field is well on its way to beat its annual record of 116,515 cuts in 2001. [...]

“We have not seen such a rapid descent since the airlines shed thousands of workers in the wake of Sept. 11.”

Whoops.

Will our subprime lenders be pursued as vigorously as bin Laden has been pursued?

The answer is "probably" because bin Laden is still at large. In six years, most of the architects of the subprime credit attack on the US will also be walking free in Connecticut or wherever they keep their spider holes.

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