so, what's with the wall street chaos?

I don't know how many of you have been following the recent stories of the implosion of several titans of the U.S. financial services industry (Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns) and closely related industries (Washington Mutual is in severe trouble and is putting itself on the auction block, and the Federal Government just bought a 79% stake of American International Group, one of the world's largest insurers, to keep it from going under).

This is an excellent article on many of the reasons why this has all happened.

While you're at it, knowing the skinny on the subprime mortgage crisis in general is not a bad idea, and this article is pretty good overview of the sequnce of events.
And yes, this should matter to you.