Holy crap, folks.  To put it into military terms, the economy is FUBAR.  A list of things going well might be much shorter than the alternative, but we’ll try to at least give you a heads up about the main problems.

The first and biggest has to be Lehman Brothers Holdings filing for bankruptcy.  Ginormous financial firms just aren’t supposed to do that, and the company’s stock has gone down almost 95 percent since the opening bell in response.

The rest of the market has, at least to some degree, followed suit.  The Dow’s down over 503 points (or 4.41 percent of its value), and the Nasdaq’s fallen 81 points (or 3.60 percent) from its opening price.

Then there’s a third thing that’s adding to the mess: the acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America.  Buying and selling stuff is all part of capitalism, of course, but this is another major corporation that, under ordinary circumstances, no one would ever expect to see in this situation.

Any heart attack wards near Wall Street are probably pretty busy.