Anyway, this is kind of alarming, and a lot of people are scared and to a greater extent, panicking right now. And right, some might go ahead and take the opportunity to buy companies/stocks and stuff.
The economy is like a plant. As you would trim the leaves of a plant so should you trim the companies of the economy.
These companies made bad decisions and took too many risks and they are paying for it. In a perfect world as one of these giants comes down there would be smaller companies that would buy up sections of the company.
There are a lot of factors pointing towards the bad economy but, for these companies the simple reason behind their collapse is bad decisions and companies should fail if they make bad decisions. It really irritates me to hear this "too big to fail" bullshit.
Though one bright side to this situation is for the long term investor in the stock market. Stock prices are coming down which means the long term investor can buy cheap stocks which will grow in value several years down the line.