On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:39:01 -0700 (PDT), Too_Many_Tools
wrote:
One for the record books...
The US taxpayer is paying for this one.
How do you like being a part owner of a bankrupt bank?
There are likely more to come.
And the Iraq War is costing you $12 billion a month.
How deep are your pockets?
TMT
JPMorgan to buy Bear for $2 a share By JOE BEL BRUNO and MADLEN READ,
AP Business Writers
===========
You ain't seen nothin' yet....
Bear Stearns was a major player in the CDS [credit default swap]
grift, and as such is the guaranteor of huge amounts of
"securities." If their CDS backing disappears (i.e. if they go
bankrupt), the value of the "securities" they guaranteed is
approximently zero.
JP Mrgan - Chase have huge amounts of "securities" hedged with
Bear Stearn CDSs, and apparently through some sort of cross
agreement have guaranteed many of Bear Stears "securities."
For some insight into this basket of snakes click on
http://www.virginiaabernethy.com/det...php?newsid=297
"As Greenspan made certain, the CDS market remained unregulated
and opaque, so that no one knew what the scale of the risks in a
falling economy were. Because it is unregulated it often was the
case that one party to a CDS resold to another financial
institution without informing the original counterparty. That
means it is not obvious that were an investor to try to cash in
his CDS he could track down its payer of the claim. The CDS
market was overwhelmingly concentrated in New York banks who held
swaps at the end of 2007 worth nominally $14 trillion. ==The
most exposed were J.P. Morgan Chase with $7.8 trillion and
Citigroup and Bank of America with $3 trillion each." ==
snip
The FBI said it was looking into the practices of sub-prime
lenders, as well as potential accounting fraud committed by
financial firms that hold these loans on their books or
securitize them and sell them to other investors. Morgan Stanley,
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. all disclosed in
regulatory filings that they were cooperating with requests for
information from various unspecified, regulatory and government
agencies.
snip
============
To provide perspective, the annual GDP of the United States si
slightly more than 13 trillion $.
Also see
http://www.virginiaabernethy.com/new...php?newsid=297
"The multi-trillion dollar US-centered securitization debacle
began to unravel in June 2007 with the liquidity crisis in two
hedge funds owned by Bear Stearns, one of the world’s largest and
most successful investment banks."
snip
http://biz.yahoo.com/nytimes/080218/...663.html?.v=19
http://lansner.freedomblogging.com/2...ix-nasty-mess/
Unka' George [George McDuffee]
-------------------------------------------
He that will not apply new remedies,
must expect new evils:
for Time is the greatest innovator: and
if Time, of course, alter things to the worse,
and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better,
what shall be the end?
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman.
Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).