Fifteen years ago, just as it was beginning to look like Bear Stearns was about to go down the tubes, I remember thinking of that old Hemingway line about bankruptcy from The Sun Also Rises, how it happens “gradually, then suddenly.” After a prosperous 85-year run on Wall Street, some of Bear Stearns’ debt was trading at around 30 cents on the dollar. And its equity, which had traded as high as $171 a year earlier, was collapsing. The confluence of these events revealed to the markets that Bear’s bankruptcy was imminent. In fact, as I know from reporting my 2009 bestseller, House of Cards, Bear was ready to go kaput that March of 2008. The bankruptcy papers had already been drawn up.