Perhaps it’s fitting that plummeting temperatures put a chill on tonight’s reveling in Time Square – a bitter end to 2008, annus horribilis?

There seems to be some glaring incongruities this holiday season. And it’s not just wacky mother nature that gives us 67-degree spring breeze one day and showers us with sleet the next.

On the one hand, about half of people surveyed by NBC News/Wall Street Journal believe 2008 was one of the worst years in American history. On the other, if you had spent half an hour in the vicinity of Rock Center in New York City, you would probably not use “sour” to describe the public mood.

Granted, there’re loads of foreign, aka boorish, tourists who tend to either step on your toes or push you as if you were a stroller. Or perhaps they merely delight in taking pictures with you – not the skyscrapers – in the backdrop.

In what the media claims to be the most severe economic downtown since the Great Depression, the city’s service industry must be doing well, luring those globe-trotting cuckoo mobs to paint the town red, at the expense of those staying in town.

Speaking of which, Bernie “ponzi scheme” Madoff’s pad has become a tourist attraction, sort of. Last we walked past it, there were couple paparazzi chasing a gentleman stepping out of the building at the corner of 64th St and Lex. It added a certain comic splash to an otherwise sombre affair.

That said, “Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to mind?”

In the spirit of the season, We’ll celebrate the New Year’s by attempting to draw up a list of non-binding resolutions for 2009, or sleep through the ruckus.

“Children who grow up in a different environment may have very different early experiences, and may process information differently than children from a different environment.”

- BBC

The “Martin Eisenstadt” show writes itself. David Shuster and MSNBC are the gift that keeps on giving. Gawker has the blow-by-blow account.

What does it say about the “shoddiness in the traditional news media and especially the blogosphere”? It’s “not that some in the media don’t check stuff on the web. It’s that they’re prepared to believe – and write – anything about Sarah Palin.”

According to Jay Cost at RealClearPolitics.com, one of the sensible metrics “has been more or less operative since the election of 1840: if the economy tanks during a Republican administration, vote Democrat. If it tanks during a Democratic administration, vote Republican.”

Applying this rule to 2008, we get the following. McCain, because he is of the incumbent party, gets the political harm. Obama, because he is of the out party, gets the political benefit. That’s all there is to it.

Since Lehman went belly up on September 15, the markets have gone over a cliff. Which means, with less than a month to go, that Sen. McCain’s fortunes are, largely, “out of his control”. Still, one can’t help wondering about the propitious timing for Dems.

Well, if you paid any attention to the increasingly heated political rhetoric from both parties, you would’ve heard ad infinitum, and justifiably impressed by, Sen. Obama’s “tax cut” for “95% of Americans”. Republicans, predictably, take issues with how the Obama camp define “middle class”, be it income below 65k or 43k.

It might be futile handwringing figuring out whether you fall into the lucky 95% bracket.The Economist provides a handy fact check.

[A]ccording to [Obama's] written plans, he really means 95% of families with children, not 95% of Americans. But his real sleight-of-hand is to count handouts administered through the tax code as “tax cuts”. You might think that a tax cut means keeping more of what you earn. The way Mr Obama uses the phrase, however, it can also mean being given a chunk of money that someone else has earned. That is how he is able to offer “tax cuts” to “95% of Americans” when about a third of American households already pay no federal income tax.

So, how can you “cut” zero, you might ask? Well, It’s called a “refundable tax credit”, or “welfare” as it’s known in the real world. Basically,

It involves the federal government taking money from those who do pay taxes, and writing checks to those who don’t.

If MSM reactions are anything to go by, the House has taken a severe beating for failing to pass Paulson’s bailout plan. However, ‘blog chatters’ – dismissed by an assortment of self-styled pundits – seem to tell a different story. Money quote this comment at FT Gideon Rachman’s blog:

[T]his is no longer about a bailout. This is about $3 ATM fees, getting charged $5 for using your credit card in Mexico, and a whole host of other things Americans are upset with their banks about. This is about people being irrationally mad at “Corporate America”. I saw one poll that said a majority would prefer a deep recession (51%) as opposed to this bailout. I don’t think anyone cares about the Dow falling 800 points. It is inconsequential to the average American. They want their pound of flesh. They have tasted blood and will not allow anything similar to this plan to pass.

We chanced upon this interesting ‘discourse’ and thought it illustrates the “sanctimonious fatigue” from the anti-hicks with what they call “reverse snobbery”, aka culture war.

Self-styled liberal blogger: “Some of us, in fact, don’t give a rat’s ass where she [Ed: Gov. Palin] comes from.”

Commenter: “Really? Did you support Obama over Clinton and Edwards because you liked where Obama wants to take us all next. or because you liked where he comes from?”

A British academic concludes from her study that men with sexist views ‘earn more’ than their modern-thinking brothers. It could be because “more traditionally-minded men are interested in power, both in terms of access to resources – money in this case – and also in terms of a woman who is submissive.”

A shot across the brow for self-proclaimed progressive men?

It’s perhaps fitting that on the last summer day of 2008, the end of a swashbuckling Wall St era falls on a day when New Yorkers bid farewell to Yankee Stadium. The latter’s planned demise marks the untimely death of standalone investment banking all the more poignant, and prompts many a soul-searching moment: is it the beginning of the end for New York as we know it?

Of course, any self-respecting New Yorker would shoot down the idea in no time. But changes … they are a-comin’. Perhaps all the doom-and-gloom is really a blessing in disguise lest the latte-sipping, arugula-munching city sophisticates go over the cliff over Sarah Palin.

While the Yankees will get a new controversial stadium, the future of i-bankers is far from clear now that the ga-ga days of money-making seem…so quaint. If it’s any consolation, the fun lasted a good 73 years – Morgan Stanley opened on Wall Street on Monday September 16, 1935 when Stockbrokers at J.P. Morgan were pushed out to stand on their own by the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act.

The disappearance of last two standing investment banking houses amount to no less a blunt acknowledgment of the limits to their brash model than the ignominious death of Lehman Bros. Market historians will debate the questions about Wall Street’s metamorphosis from chiefly a client-facing capital market agent to a once hugely profitable principal in the ever-quants-driven derivatives game.

For the onlookers, we’d say look on the bright side.

In honor of the historical week that has changed the landscape on Wall Street, here’s a recap (courtesy of Reuters).

Friday September 12 – NY Fed president Timothy Geithner convenes an emergency meeting with Treasury Department officials and top executives at all the major Wall Street banks over Lehman rescue.

Saturday September 13 – While discussions over Lehman continue at the NY Fed’s Lower Manhattan building, AIG begins talks to regulators over its survival.

Sunday September 14 – Lehman finds no buyer but a group of 10 global banks and securities firms form a $70 billion loan program to help ease a credit shortage.

Monday September 15 – Earlier morning, 158-year-old Lehman files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. DJIA falls more than 500 points.

Tuesday September 16 – While Barclays agrees to pay $1.75 billion for some of Lehman’s prime assets, including its Manhattan HQ and North American investment banking and capital markets businesses, after market closed AIG is taken over by the federal government with an $85 billion 2-year bridge loan in exchange for a 79.9 percent government stake in the company.

Wednesday September 17 – The U.S. stock market plummets, with shares of the remaining two investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley dropping 14 percent and 24 percent, respectively.

Thursday September 18 – UK’s FSA bans short-selling on a number of financial stocks for four months. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson shops around a plan to Congress that would create an entity similar to the Resolution Trust Corporation,created in 1989 after the savings and loan crisis.

Friday Septmber 19 – SEC issues an emergency order temporarily banning short-selling in shares of about 799 financial institutions. The measure is set to end on Oct. 2, but can be extended by another 10 days; Market watchdogs in France, Portugal and Ireland take similar steps to crack down on short-selling.