panic

The first tentative tentacles, like feathers of frost on a window pane, begin to explore the farthest reaches of the best minds on Wall Street, as one or two of them first being to perceive, that there may not be quite enough gas or enough pipelines to deliver it, to keep them from freezing to death deep in the recesses of their steel-and-glass enclosures in Manhatten .... ..and all the money in the world won't be worth a book of matches in the coming crisis ....