If you're worried about your investments...

It's hard not to feel a little nervous when venerable banking institutions like Lehman Brothers are failing. Merrill Lynch, which did not fail this week but faltered long enough to be snapped up by a bigger bank, was the brokerage that my family used throughout my childhood for college funds and other investments. It's sad to think of the Merrill Lynch bull icon going away. It's also the brokerage where most of my mother's estate resides, and I am right in the middle of slogging through the paperwork to distribute the money to myself and my siblings. *gulp*

( I'm putting the rest of this behind a cut to avoid annoying folks that are worrying about paying next month's rent and don't really care what happens to the Merrill Lynch Bull. )