Cheer Up! Total Financial Market Meltdown Isn't All Bad

For a dedicated silver-lining hunter like Michael Lewis, there are plenty of upsides to the total collapse of the US financial system. “A lot of attractive office space seems to be opening up in midtown Manhattan, for instance,” he writes in Bloomberg. Here are five other reasons to celebrate:

• We get to see what’s inside big Wall Street firms. Lehman Brothers’ smoldering pile of liabilities should prove illuminating.

• We are creating the financial leaders of tomorrow. Someone is bound to get credit for avoiding something even worse.
• Ordinary Americans get a finance lesson and realize that many financial advisers are “at best, fools.”
• We have lots of nice, new houses. Empty, mostly, but nice. The government will probably have to buy them all, but don’t worry. It’ll borrow the money from China.
• Many Wall Street execs lose their jobs and get to finally meet their children.

(More financial sector stories.)