Ed Cone pointed to an article in WSJ about Morgan Stanley’s quarterly loss and the infusion of $5 billion their getting from China Investment Corp.  Ed focused on the cash infusion from another foreign entity (he also pointed to this earlier story), but my eye was caught by these two paragraphs:

Morgan Stanley, the second-largest U.S. investment bank by market
value, reported a net loss for the quarter ended Nov. 30 of $3.59
billion, or $3.61 a share, compared with year-earlier net income of
$1.54 billion, or $1.44 a share. The loss significantly exceeded the 39
cents a share loss estimated by analysts polled by Thomson Financial…

A loss was expected, but the red ink proved much deeper than analysts
had thought, illustrating how rapidly the market for loans and
securities tied to subprime mortgages deteriorated in November.
Analysts said the company has conservatively marked the mortgage assets
down to about 25 cents on the dollar in an effort to put its problems
behind it, and Morgan Stanley Chief Financial Officer Colm Kelleher
said he is "absolutely confident" that the write-offs accurately
reflect the values the bank sees.

In the past we’ve seen companies hammered on the Street for missing earnings estimates by a penny or two per share; amazing to see how quickly we’re becoming accustomed to seeing loss estimates that are so far off that if plotted on a globe the estimate would be the North Pole and the real number would be the South Pole.  It’s like they’re saying, "We know we’re in deep sh– but we don’t know if it’s at our knees or our neck."  And we trust these jokers with our money; I don’t know if that makes us or them the fools.

And to the point Ed was making about foreign investment I’d like to add this observation: I’ve read and heard many hard-core Iraq war supporters say that we need to continue fighting over there or soon we’ll be speaking Arabic (I heard one guy say Muslim instead of Arabic which I guess means he speaks Christian).  I’d posit that the way things are going these days which language any of us speaks in the future will be determined by which bank we work for or do business with.