Too Failed To Bail

(10 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

I don’t have time to even begin giving this a real analysis right now, but you need to be aware of what is happening today:

In one the most extraordinary days in Wall Street’s history, Merrill Lynch is near an 11th-hour deal with Bank of America to avert a deepening financial crisis while another storied securities firm, Lehman Brothers, hurtled toward liquidation, according to people briefed on the deal.

The moves came after a weekend of frantic negotiations between federal officials and Wall Street executives over how to avert a downward spiral in the markets. Questions still remain about how the market will react and whether other firms may still falter like A.I.G., the large insurer, and Washington Mutual, both of whose stocks fell precipitously last week.

Coming just a week after the government took control of mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the magnitude of the industry’s reshaping is staggering: two of the most powerful firms on Wall Street, Merrill Lynch and Lehman, will disappear.

This is simply staggering.  In less than one year, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Lehman Brothers will have simply disappeared.  To put that in some perspective, all three of these banks were founded before and survived the Great Depression.  The GSE nationalization is the largest nationalization since at least the Depression, and possibly in all of American history.  Another of Wall Street’s most venerable partnerships, Arthur Andersen, one of the five largest accounting firms in America also disappeared during the last eight years.

Someone ought to be making an attack ad right now – if this is how Republicans have governed with regards to the fortunes of Americas biggest financial firms, how can anyone in any small town or city in America believe that they will be able to make a living if they continue to govern in the future?

28 comments

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    • Jay Elias on September 15, 2008 at 02:36
      Author

    …I’ve been pretty sanguine about what is happening in the markets, but stepping back to realize the scale of what has happened already, I’m utterly staggered.

    • Robyn on September 15, 2008 at 02:51

    …are seeing their retirement plans go up in smoke.

  1. if this is how Republicans have governed with regards to the fortunes of Americas biggest financial firms, how can anyone in any small town or city in America believe that they will be able to make a living if they continue to govern in the future?

    And remember that it was the Republicans who were supposedly the friends of big business and who were friends of stockholders.  So if these big guys are falling apart, you can imagine what’s going on down stream.

  2. they’re imagining the collapse of the DJIA…

  3. is here.

    It appears that BOA likely will buy out Merrill Lynch. Will it be too much bad debt to digets? Or will BOA be offered federal guarantees/loans for the bad debt as was the case when Bear Stearns disappeared?

    Where is all of this bailout and bail-in backstopping coming from, anyway? Pretend money created by fiat out of some black hole or pure vacuum? Is it like Weimar Republic currency?

  4. Did you of delusional church of ASSumption figure your “freedoms” were based upon the illusion of TeeVee.  ASSume you were masters of the entire world of six billion when your measly 300 million population only gave to  the world “cool” entertainment and appropriately censored internet content?   WTF.  All throughout the history on mankind elite shitheads  and kings/dictators have been able to  exploit their respective populations with little problems up until the united states with it’s promise of equality and opportunity.  Yea, well globo-corp has erased all of that.  My projections?  My hypothesis?

    The US gets to be a de-populated nature preserve.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G

    500,000 and “you” ain’t one of them.

    It is why I keep the Apocalyptic horse.

  5. Who made this call??

    Maybe the owners of our debt demanded that they have close to 24 hours to get their crap together once we stunned the western financial community with this.

    Tearing my hair out over inability to formulate questions. And waaaaaay too many questions.

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