News; the nation's best-known investment firms

The year decimated America's corporate financial landscape, with many of
the nation's best-known investment firms, banks, mortgage insurers and insurance
companies bankrupt, sold, taken over by the federal government, or continuing to
exist thanks to the biggest CHI flat
iron taxpayer bailout in U. best hair
straightener S. history. "Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Lehman
[Brothers], major companies that were the cornerstone of our financial services
business are no longer with us. That is just a big shock," said Hugh Johnson,
who heads the New York-based financial firm Johnson Illington Advisors.