Andrew Sorkin at the New York Times offers a short tick-tock on the weekend demise of Bear Stearns, the Wall Street powerhouse that just sold, pending shareholder approval, for six cents on the dollar of its Friday stock price—less than the value of the Manhattan skyscraper bearing the firm’s name.

The story is full of good lines. “Make no mistake,” Sorkin says: “This was one of the greatest corporate euthanizations of all time.” And, “It will go down either as a heroic rescue of the financial system or grand theft, Wall Street style. Maybe it was a bit of both.”

On the behavior of Bear Sterns’s Wall Street colleagues and customers: “Cash, or “liquidity,” as it is known in the trade, is the oxygen that keeps investment banks alive. No matter how healthy you are, you can’t breathe if someone puts a pillow over your head. That’s what Bear Stearns’s clients and rivals did, and they did it without remorse.”

“Corporate euthanization … can’t breathe … without remorse.” Sheds a whole new light on Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the free market, and leads us to wonder if perhaps Dr. Jack Kevorkian should be setting his sights on a position with the SEC or the Fed, or maybe Bear Stearns buyer JPMorgan Chase, rather than simply running for Congress.

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