Secretary Paulson can kiss my...

Lets see. The current secretary of the treasury is a former CEO of Goldman Sachs. Therefore it makes perfect sense that he wait to announce the all time biggest public bailout of an industry until after one of Goldman's rivals declares bankruptcy. Yep, perfect sense. Lets disrupt the lives of 25,000 people so they can have their lives thrown into uncertainty. Next, lets go ahead and bailout every other bad betting financial firm in this current credit crisis but totally ignore the disruption that you caused for those employed in some form or fashion by Lehman Brothers.

What happened to free markets in this country? And if you are going to bailout this industry, why do pick and choose who lives or dies? Lets save Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie Mae, but leave Lehman to die on the vine. I would really like to know the rational behind this. Somehow I think Secretary Paulson's buddies at Goldman had it out for Lehman. This is his way of hooking them up. Preciate cha Mr. Secretary!

Those who do not learn from history...

are doomed to repeat it. The Bear Stearns story reminds me a lot of Enron's final days in a way. Both have executives saying everything was OK but seemed oblivious to market conditions and other issues surrounding their firms. Both faced liquidity issues and had lenders seem to lose confidence causing their stock price to have huge drops in short time frames. The government became a big player in the Enron case and seems to be stepping in that direction with the announcement that emergency funding from the Federal Reserve.

If you have never read Conspiracy of Fools I highly recommend it. Kurt Eichenwald's book is the fastest 660 page book I have ever read. The story of the collapse of Enron is similar in several ways to the Bear Stearns story from what I have read in my spare time about the situation.

I can only hope that Bear will be the only investment bank to go down. I happen to be employed indirectly by a similar firm to Bearand there are several rumors of the firm's liquidity issues out in the market. Although not as severe as Bear's situation, I think all investment banks with high exposure to the mortgage crisis will have someone question their liquidity in the next several weeks.