In modern times, in the aftermath of business difficulties, many of us often exclaim, “That’s no way to run a railroad.” What we mean, of course, is that leadership was lacking, or that leaders made critical errors. The phrase is derived from the caption of a Depression-era cartoon that showed a signalman peering out of his box as two trains below him collided, exclaiming “What a Way to Run a Railroad.” Either way, that caption may well be an apt description of the way many business leaders have handled the current sub-prime mortgage crisis. As the impact of the crisis ...