Bear's 'Fire Sale' Sparks Fear That No Bank Is Safe

[DuaneBidoux]

Source: CNBC with Reuters

A fire sale of Bear Stearns stunned Wall Street and pummeled global financial stocks on Monday on fears that few banks are safe from deepening market turmoil.



Read more: http://www.cnbc.com/id/23671674

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It is time for even those who have no interest in financial and investment stuff to beginning informing themselves.

[closeupready]

1. The reason the markets are in turmoil is because they know this is going to lead to higher taxes.

At least on the wealthy. Or at least, that will be one of many consequences to this downturn.

[aquart]

4. Golly, how amazingly simplistic.

And how interesting that you pretty much take it back in the body of the message.

[closeupready]

8. I don't know what you're even talking about.

Care to make some sense this Monday?

[H8fascistcons]

11. AAHHHHH OOOOKKKKKKKKKKK...

So let me get this straight...Don't look here, look over there, fight them over there, so we don't have to fight em over here. Lower taxes on the .2% that control 50% of the wealth in America for seven years, that policy is not part of the problem for our financial crisis, it is the possibility that on this very Monday, sometime in the future, those .2% may have to pay a higher tax rate, is the cause of our impending financial crisis and melt down that has been building now for the past seven years? MY name is not Bass and I am not swallowing your pig slop, hook, line, and sinker, go peddle that fish bait on the "Sludge" report.

[closeupready]

12. One of the reason, yes, because those 0.2% include Cramer,

Greenspan et al., i.e., the people who move the markets one way or the other.

[H8fascistcons]

15. O.K.

Greetings; O.K. I get your point but this crisis started to build years ago and it goes much farther than just tax hikes. All of the regulations were in place to keep this very thing from happening in the first place but the Criminal Fascist republicans once again, deregulated the financial industry and this is what we get, another savings and loan crisis of the 80's....

[closeupready]

Yet, Greenspan today commented that markets need to stay unregulated

that they will "police themselves". Yeah, right, lot of good deregulation did here.

He must live in an alternative reality. :crazy:

[pnwmom]

20. Not in the short term it won't, and not while a recession is in full gear.

All higher taxes would do is slow the economy down further.

[coalition_unwilling]

22. All higher taxes in the aggregate would do is slow the the

economy down further. However, targeted tax increases (on the top 1% of wage earners) and tax reductions (on the bottom 50% of wage earners) could actually have a net stimulative effect, even if government got a net increase in tax reveunues as a result of its tax increases on the top 1%. The reason in economics is simple: tax relief to the middle and lower classes tends to have a strong stimulative effect (through a phenomenon known as the "multiplier effect" where a given dollar is spent over and over again, producing many dollars worth of GDP).

[pnwmom]

23. Makes sense to me.

But I still doubt it would happen (like many things that make sense).

[Democrats_win]

2. Investors: bend over and kiss your assets good-bye.

If Fraud Street doesn't get your money, those of you hiding it under the mattress will lose it through the FED/Bush weak dollar policy.

[pnwmom]

21. But the next step could be: bend over and kiss your JOB goodbye.

The consequences of a massive bank failure would touch EVERYONE, not just investors.

[BigDogDistrict44]

3. If their was only a past S & L political rip-off we could

Have learned from...lets see a Bush comes to mind!

[shraby]

7. Yep, the Bush surname was prominent in

the S&L ripoff and in this one. Amazing, no?

[enid602]

9. czar

I think Bush should appoint Neil to a newly-formed Foreclosure Czar position.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Yep, it is high time, what might be coming is either a very deep recession

or a depression

[guitar man]

6. shades of 1929? nt

[uponit7771]

10. ...and Stearns wasn't even in the worse

[Deny and Shred]

13. The Yankees paid more for A-Rod than JPMorgan did for Bear Stearns

Just heard that on MSNBC. This deal stinks to high heaven. The Fed would only put up the $30 billion if JPMorgan was the buyer?
Also, the Fed opens the discount window up to investment banks today, incredibly rare move, to interject liquidity, the very thing BSC needed to remain solvent.
The fact that this was concluded on a Sunday, with other buyers, albeit less well-capitalized (I'll take that on faith because JPMs balance sheet may be inflated also) makes me wonder why there weren't offers from other investment banks. They are all down big today while JPM is up. Too fishy.
If these CDOs are ever liquid again, it will be the steal of the century. The tax-write-offs JPM will get, ..

[katty]

14. 2-buck bear--employees losing millions and let go, what's next

[Tab]

16. Well, no bank IS ever truly safe

I only know roughly the Bear Stearns details, but this is a correction - a very painful one, but a correction nonetheless - that companies will (hopefully learn from). This is not the first time something huge collapsed overnight (can you say "Enron" anyone?) and then there was that London trader a number of years ago trading in metals (I think it was) that took positions that didn't pan out and single-handled basically brought the bank down.

[Seabiscuit]

17. Firestone, Countrywide and Washington Mutual will be the next to go...

followed by Citibank.

Meanwhile, the entire market has dropped. Even my stock portfolio, consisting of relatively safe stocks, has dropped 20% in value during the past 3 months.

It sucks. All starting with those criminal subprime loans the banks and mortgage companies all got rich off of while screwing the consumers overly hungry to own their own homes, but who couldn't qualify for legitimate financing.

[sarcasmo]

18. Watch where you put your investments if you have any.

Pay off your house!

[darue]

19. why would anyone trust word one comming out of these people?

Everything was supposed to be A-OK on Friday, then this surprise Monday.

[TheLastMohican]

24. All the debt will be bought by the government

and those institutions nationalized. A correction of some 20-30%. Of course some speculative capital like "hedge funds" will get burned but after that a healthy economy will reappear.
Just make sure folks you invest in real commodities and not some "imaginary" stocks.