The Fall of the Gilded Age

It had been a long time coming, but in the last week, with the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers and the distress sale of another, Merrill Lynch, thousands of jobs and some 700-billion dollars in wealth, in stock, simply disappeared. "The gilded age is over," said Holly Peterson, wife of a multi-millionaire investment banker and daughter of multi-billionaire financier Pete Peterson. "The whole era of conspicuous consumption and free spending and luxury ended as of this week,"... Full Story