Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Who needs a retirement fund?
by Anonymous at 11:13 AM
This is what I was talking about on Monday; the fallout of the Bear Stearns takeover for $2/share. I understand this part because if something similar happened at my company, I'd be directly effected. It's in my best interest to understand this part. Regular employees* seeing their retirements disappear overnight. People who had $50,000 worth of stock options on Friday have $500 worth of stock options today, all because it turns out that the people who are running their industry decided that there was no such thing as a high-risk loan.
* By regular employees, I'm talking about the 9 to 5'er. People who take the train or bus into work. The M-F man or woman who answers phones and gets 2 weeks a year for vacation and sends their kids to public schools. Now they're broke.
The irony is that the company they work for is supposed to be good at investing. A federal bailout? Who's bailing out these people? A [bleeping] shame.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Where was Bud Fox when all this went down?
by Anonymous at 5:16 PM
I'm not going to pretend that I understand exactly what happened the last few days in regards to Bear Stearns. I do know that a company that was worth billions last week and billions beyond my wildest dreams about 14 months ago was sold for pennies on Sunday to JP Morgan. I can grasp that. Friday they were worth X. Sunday they apparently were worth X/10. I guess I understand. But how does that happen? How can a company that has a building worth approximately $1.2 billion be sold for $236 million total? And how does the CEO of that company go on television one day and say that he does not see any pressure on its liquidity and his company has about $17 billion in excess cash on its balance sheet, and then a few days later his company sells to a competitor at such a ridiculous discount?
I don't know the answers to any of those questions. And I have a feeling that a lot of people who are a lot smarter than me don't know the answers to those questions either. What I do know is that thousands of littler people who work for Bear Stearns or JP Morgan will probably lose their jobs while a guy like Alan Schwartz will get to keep his or get a crazy buyout.
Capitalism at its finest [worst].
