From the future, as of January 10th, 2008:

A brief history of the recent turbulence in the financial services sector is as follows.

In November of last year, Citi downgraded E*Trade and set a 15% chance of bankruptcy. Goldman Sachs downgraded Citi to a sell, forcing Citi to later downgrade GS from a strong buy to a mild buy. They both agreed on the point “Why the eff does E*Trade have subprime exposure?” Merrill Lynch has made plans to downgrade GS because of its heretofore unrevealed defense pact with Citi, but they are looking internally for a way to resolve it in the context of their downgrade non-proliferation treaty with Lehman and GS. Bank of America has been skating by nicely, but has its downgrade silos “hot and ready.” CSFB, in a defensive move, has unVoltronned itself and become two lion-like entities, CS and FB, who have been firing downgrades at all comers in order to safeguard the planet Arus from the forces of Zarkon. JP Morgan is sitting on the sidelines, just happy no one has noticed how fucked they really are. Bear Stearns has been downgraded to the point of not actually existing; nothing remains aside from a glassy plane and the remnants of ridiculously cheap compensation packages.