So the New York Times changed the title of the article from my earlier post:

Crisis Altering Wall St. As Stars Begin to Scatter

Here’s to the real-time public edit, and the paper of record gettin’ all bloglike up in it! You, FR, are undoubtedly able to do the semantic dissection of the difference between “big banks” (those that rally 30% in a day) losing “top talent” (and/or drop 30% in a day) and “stars” “scattering” like so much Tinkerbell dust.  Whatever the Times‘s assessment of banking capabilities, this is just another timestep in the ongoing shuffle of those responsible (add your own airquotes!) for the new new status quo doing their cut-n-run. As AIG execs can attest, it’s much harder to claw back a retention bonus once the retented have evacuated. So to speak.

The utility of a post-print headline change is worth pointing out, too, as another nail in the coffin of print media. (Who cares what it was on paper? We got a web readership to service!) Not that that makes the reasoning any less opaque. Perhaps since Bangkok is melting down and GM is going bankrupt for the next little while or so, the editors felt we could all do with a little more bidness magic wand and a little less talent excretion.