Compare this to the failure of Lehman's unregulated credit default swaps and non-cleared interest rate swaps, which triggered chaos in the market because these contracts were not centrally cleared.

Now the market is in chaos and thousands of investors have been devastated by fraud, with Madoffed threatening to become an all-too-common verb.

In a speech to Morgan Stanley's staff during the market turmoil of 2008, John Mack, the firm's street-fighting boss, wondered aloud: "How do you get through chaos?"