Stern bears.

Here's what I know about investment banking:

- It's where all the jocks, insufferably congenial posers, and too-smart-by-half people from high school went to work.

- Putting jocks and insufferably congenial people in charge of large sectors of unregulated Economy has never seemed like a good idea to me.

- The poor ideation of the above has nothing on the not-a-good-ideaness of giving over the reins of modern capitalism to the same people who, when last we saw them, were explaining how they were just days away from convincing the federal government to send them the 40 acres + mule to which they were statutorily entitled. You know who you are, Hank.

What would happen if you did this? Well, I'm no economist. But I definitely did go to high school, and it seems like you'd get a lot of alpha males competing with each other to bring about the biggest deal involving the greatest number of other alpha males met at cocaine fueled parties, and you'd make that deal involve complex, unproved derivative instruments that are dependent on every American buying three homes and paying them off at 11% interest.

And then you'd get this.

The part of the story I love best is that the deal, which discounts BS's stock price from $30 to $2, includes the skyscraper that Bear Stearns is housed in. Which is certainly worth more than the purchase price. So Bear, the Great Bull's hit bottom.

-JEK
Ran his college newspaper and kept it very much in the black; sometimes thinks he should have been a management consultant, but less so now; triple varsity PE, favorite moment of any party is discovery of an uninhabited corner, raised to believe he owes the government at least 1/3 of any mule he ever owns.