From Scene 10 in the ongoing novel 9 Days Falling...
...Images of 9/11 still played in his mind as he considered the situation the country was in now. It was a perfect metaphor for what has happened. JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo were the four great steel beams at the core of our World Trade Center economy. The investment banks like Lehman, Bear Stearns and others were the truss system that was strung between these four great pillars. All the other smaller banks, thrifts, and S&Ls were like the floors of this great financial edifice. Now, when the first subprime airliner struck the system and ripped apart three of the four major investment houses, immolating them in a thousand degree fire of overleveraged securities, Custodian Hank Paulson, ran to congress in a panic and said that if something wasn't done to put out this fire the central core pillars would collapse and the entire building would come crashing down.
It was therefore decided to do whatever was necessary to prevent any of these four large banks from failing. They were simply deemed "too big" to fail. And what was done was one of the greatest exercises in duplicity, denial, and sleight of hand the financial world has ever seen....
Scene 10 concludes the second day in our descent, with most of the major plot lines and principle characters now established in the story. BlackDog is a real device, initially named "Big Dog" by the DARPA researchers who created the monster. In like manner Gh0stRAT is a real virus on the stealthy "GhostNet." Together the two make for a very bad day for attorney Jim Banes.
