In the big picture, all these things are connected. But, they all have their own distinct story lines.

   Let’s start with greed, which comes in two flavors. There is the greed by the owners of the kosher meatpacking plant that would make my Jewish, non-religious grandparents cringe:

The Iowa attorney general on Tuesday brought an array of criminal charges for child labor violations against the owners and top managers of a meatpacking plant where nearly 400 workers were detained in a May immigration raid.

The state charges were the first to be brought against owners and senior managers at the plant, Agriprocessors, since the May 12 raid. Federal prosecutors convicted nearly 300 workers, most of them illegal immigrants from Guatemala, on document fraud charges, with the majority sentenced to five months in prison. Advocates for immigrants had criticized federal prosecutors for punishing the workers but not the managers.

In all, 9,311 criminal misdemeanor charges involving 32 under-age workers were filed against the company, Agriprocessors Inc., and its owner, Aaron Rubashkin, and his son Sholom, who was the top manager of the packing plant in Postville, Iowa.

   And there is the greed I wrote about yesterday: the obscene pay packages that appear to be coming to the two incompetent, over-paid CEOs of the essentially bankrupt Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The New York Times finally catches up to this story today:

Senator Barack Obama and two other prominent Democrats urged federal housing regulators on Tuesday to cut the golden parachutes of the ousted leaders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, another sign that the government bailout of those mortgage giants could reverberate through the presidential campaign.

Mr. Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, asked that any “inappropriate windfall payments” to the chief executives and senior managers of those agencies be voided, in a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. and the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the new regulator for Fannie and Freddie.

Together, Daniel H. Mudd of Fannie Mae and Richard F. Syron of Freddie Mac are eligible for as much as $24 million in severance, retirement benefits and deferred compensation.

“Under no circumstances should the executives of these institutions earn a windfall at a time when the U.S. Treasury has taken unprecedented steps to rescue these companies with taxpayer resources,” Mr. Obama wrote.

Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, has said on the campaign trail that the government rescue of Fannie and Freddie should not turn into a bailout for their top executives and Wall Street investors.

Two Democrats on the Senate banking committee, Charles E. Schumer of New York and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, wrote a letter similar to Mr. Obama’s. They called the pay packages “out of line” and urged the agency to “substantially reduce or eliminate” them using new powers granted in a housing law passed this summer.

   Nice to see that McCain finally had something to say about this.

   Meanwhile, Lehman Bros is close to collapsing:

The investment bank, Lehman Brothers in an all-out fight for its survival, said Wednesday morning that it expected a loss of $3.9 billion, or $5.92 a share, in the third quarter after $5.6 billion in write-downs.

The investment bank also said that it would spin off the majority of its remaining commercial real estate holdings into a new public company. And it confirmed plans to sell a majority of its investment management division in a move that it expects to generate $3 billion.

The announcements come after Lehman’s stock lost nearly half its value on Tuesday as investors feared it was running out of options to raise capital and shore up its ailing balance sheet. Shares in Lehman, a major underwriter of mortgage-related securities during the credit boom, are down over 90 percent since hitting their peak last year before the subprime mortgage crisis.

   The two reasons to shed tears over this is, well, pretty important. First, thousands of people will likely lose their jobs in this madness–something the Times article neglects to talk about. Second, if anyone thought the bailouts of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were somehow going to make things better, well, Lehman’s deep distress is a sign that we are still being sucked into a vortex that none of the genuises, who predicted the housing boom would continue, know where it will end.

   Hang on.