The financial beat I've been covering since this September is not the same beat I took on when I first began this position in the summer of 2007.

While Wall Street had steadily been making its way to a meltdown, the news that Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy and Bank of America would purchase Merrill Lynch landed with a heavy and dreaded thud.

Since then, financial communicators have been on edge, unable to make solid predictions about the future. ...