I was talking to my father last night about the economy and the prospect that some companies may not make it through the crisis. Pop was born in 1923 and he started reeling off the names of companies that were around when he was a child that he thought were rock-solid but no longer exist. He knew all their stories -- who the players were; why they failed; how much money he or one of his friends lost when another one went belly-up or got swallowed up by a bigger fish.

• Arthur Andersen - Founded 1913. Dissolved 2008.
• Dean Witter Reynolds - Founded 1924. Merged with Morgan Stanley 1997.
• Drexel Burnham Lambert - Founded 1935. Died a slow death 1990-1992.
• E.F. Hutton & Co. - Founded 1904. E.F. Hutton merged with Shearson to become Shearson Lehman Hutton, Inc. and then acquired by Primerica which was swallowed up by Smith Barneywhich was acquired by Citigroup.
• First Boston - Founded 1932. Retired by Credit Suisse 2006.
• H. F. Ahmanson & Co. - Founded 1927.  Acquired by Washington Mutual 1988.
• Kidder, Peabody & Co. - Founded 1865. Sold to Paine Webber 1995.
• Paine Webber - Founded in 1880. Acquired by Swiss bank UBS AG in 2000.
• Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company - Founded 1845. Liquidated in 2001.
• Salomon Brothers - Founded 1910.  Now part of CitiGroup.

My grandfather was a 33rd Degree Freemason who built a construction company in New Jersey. He was a hard-working, self-taught businessman who made the Wall Street Journal daily required reading for my father. By the time Pop was 12 years old, he had a paper route and a grocery delivery business manned by three 12-year old kids he hired from the neighborhood. Pop is 86 years old now and he's seen it all -- the good times and the bad.  The only piece of advice he gave me, before he hung up the phone, as he reflected on the financial turmoil we're experiencing now was, "Son, what goes up must come down.  But eventually, it will go up again."