Might as well make the best of it

I've been watching the financial- market mess with dismay, of course -- and not a little anger.

It's tough seeing your portfolio melting like ice on Higgs Beach, and maddening to know that the markets are just now tumbling to lending practices that are both stupid and greedy.

I reserve a special place in fiscal hades for the ratings agencies -- Moody's, Standard & Poor's and the like -- that looked at crazy "packages" of loans and blessed them with AAA ratings, which in some cases have soured to no rating at all in weeks. These people get paid for that kind of judgment?

And then there are the direct perps -- agencies like Freddie Mac that were foolish enough to embrace a category of borrowers known as NINAs and brazen enough to value their debts Grade A. NINA, after all, stands for "no income, no assets." These are creditworthy?

And as the credit market sneezes, Wall Street catches not a cold but pneumonia.

So the other day, when the market laid yet another egg, I had only one response:

Make a frittata.