The language out of Wall Street today is enough to scare you silly. Crisis. Fire sale. Brink of collapse. Titanic mess.
Late last night the news spread that JPMorgan Chase and the Fed have engineered a takeover of floundering Wall Street bad boy Bear Stearns.
A year ago, when the bonuses and bull were flying high, Bear Stearns was worth $20 billion dollars. Yesterday, JPMorgan bought it for $200 million and change. Two bucks a share.
Where this all unwinds, nobody knows. But it’s not over yet.
This hour, On Point: the crisis on Wall Street and where it goes.
-Tom Ashbrook
Guests:
Dennis Berman, global deals editor for The Wall Street Journal.
Peter Coy, economics editor for BusinessWeek magazine.
Douglas Elmendorf, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, economist at the Federal Reserve from 2001-2006 and deputy assistant for economic policy at the Treasury Department from 1999 -2001.
Gillian Tett, capital markets editor for the Financial Times.
Bill Fleckenstein, president of Fleckenstein Capital, which manages a hedge fund based in Seattle, and author of the new book “Greenspan’s Bubbles: The Age of Ignorance at the Federal Reserve.”
Tags: Bear Stearns, economics, financial crisis, stock market
