We wanted to find a cogent way to say that the scheduled data this week would not matter in comparison to the news from the financial sector this week. Indeed, the markets largely ignored scheduled data late this week in the shadow of Lehman speculation.

The obvious answer was to bring our favorite blog-readin' graphic artist, Nirish, back for his latest drop.

So now, capital markets can crack open a fresh box for what will undoubtedly be another week of overlooked scheduled data. And the lemmings will rally to whoever panics loudest!

(many pundits over the next few days will say things like "bear stearns and countrywide make sense, but not Lehman and Merril! This is really really bad!"

Well, sure it's really really bad, but NO MORTGAGE BROKER who could fog a mirror in '06 should be surprised that the obvious frontrunner in stated, NOO's and the obvious frontrunner--via subsidiaries--in both cut rate SISA and no VOR/M sub-prime, are now in trouble. Did you really think that many folks with 660 scores that were going SISA on 600k NOO's were just going to be able to flip it at a profit in 2006? Either way, hindsight's 20/20, but hopefully a "takeaway lesson" is emerging).