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Lehman Brothers bankrupt, Merrill Lynch buyout

robbieduncan said:
And so it begins for AIG. Will they be next? :(
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Why exactly does the BBC feel the need to put the Manchester United link at the bottom of the article? Would they do this if AIG sponsored any other club? :confused:

Seriously worrying that though. When insurance firms start going under, what happens to all the policies they've been underwriting?
 
Queso said:
Why exactly does the BBC feel the need to put the Manchester United link at the bottom of the article? Would they do this if AIG sponsored any other club? :confused:

Seriously worrying that though. When insurance firms start going under, what happens to all the policies they've been underwriting?
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You have a point and a good one; agree. When the airline XL went to the wall last week I would be surprised if a link to West Ham was provided by the BBC.

Re insurance firms, the policies are either sold on, or underwritten by others, or the insurance burden is shared, or the Government might be persuaded to step in, or the unfortunate public is sold down the river.
Cheers
 
bigandy said:
BBC video interviewing City workers in London.

Includes a swear word for free!
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All those people are idiots: they almost certainly work for firms like the one I work for (I think one is even wearing one of our lanyards). We have a very, very firm policy that prevents us taking to the press. Breaking this can well lead to loosing your job. I did wonder why HR sent round an email reminding us all of this in the afternoon :rolleyes:
 
robbieduncan said:
All those people are idiots: they almost certainly work for firms like the one I work for (I think one is even wearing one of our lanyards). We have a very, very firm policy that prevents us taking to the press. Breaking this can well lead to loosing your job. I did wonder why HR sent round an email reminding us all of this in the afternoon :rolleyes:
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Yeah, they didn't seem like the brightest bunch in the world. :rolleyes:
 
what are you guys complaining about? this is a great economy! "the fundamentals are sound"

[note the dripping sarcasm]
 
donga said:
what are you guys complaining about? this is a great economy! "the fundamentals are sound"

[note the dripping sarcasm]
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[senile] McCain declared in a new TV ad, "Our economy is in crisis. Only proven reformers John McCain and Sarah Palin can fix it" — though he also told voters in Jacksonville, Fla., "The fundamentals of our economy are strong." [/senile]
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Link

Can we call this a flip flop?
 
P-Worm said:
Of course not. Oh, and did you hear? McCain was a POW.

P-Worm
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McCain was a POW? Wow, I didn't know that.

</sarcasm>

This is truly a historic (in a bad sense) day for Wall St. or as my local newspaper says Fail St.

Whilst I feel bad for the employees that didn't not have a hand backing the ***** paper their respective companies did, the companies reaped what they sowed. I can't believe everyone was looking for yet another bailout. I was pissed as it was when the gov't stepped in with Bear.

AIG certainly looks like it's next...

WSJ.com said:
With strong encouragement from the Fed, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. are seeking to raise $70 billion to $75 billion in loans to help prop up AIG, according to people familiar with the situation. Word of AIG's efforts to borrow that much sent the stock market tumbling in the last hour of trading, which made Monday the worst percentage decline in six years.
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This certainly isn't over yet. The question becomes, will these new massive companies be able to integrate efficiently and effectively or will they struggle and thus ultimately pay the price?
 
And now Washington Mutual had its credit rating cut to junk.

My stepmother has accounts w/WaMu.

Wish we still had the Glass-Steagall Act still in place.
Glass-Steagall was one of the many necessary measures taken by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democratic Congress to deal with the Great Depression. Crudely speaking, in the 1920s commercial banks (the types that took deposits, made construction loans, etc.) recklessly plunged into the bull market, making margin loans, underwriting new issues and investment pools, and trading stocks. When the bubble popped in 1929, exposure to Wall Street helped drag down the commercial banks. In the absence of deposit insurance and other backstops, the results were devastating. Wall Street’s failure helped destroy Main Street.

The policy response was to erect a wall between investment banking and commercial banking. It outlasted the Berlin Wall by a few decades. In the 1990s, as another bull market took hold, momentum built to overturn Glass-Steagall. Commercial banks were eager to get into high-margin businesses like underwriting hot tech stocks. Brokerage firms saw commercial banks, with their massive customer bases, as great distribution channels for stocks, mutual funds, and other financial products that they created. Generally speaking, the investment banks were the aggressors. In April 1998, Sandy Weill's Travelers, which owned Salomon Smith Barney, merged with Citicorp. The following year, Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This law effectively deleted the prohibition on commercial banks owning investment banks and vice versa.
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The Gramm in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act is Phil Gramm—John McCain’s Ex chief economic adviser, and the man who called all of us “whiners” for being concerned about the economy.
 
joepunk said:
And now Washington Mutual had its credit rating cut to junk.

My stepmother has accounts w/WaMu.

Wish we still had the Glass-Steagall Act still in place.

The Gramm in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act is Phil Gramm—John McCain’s Ex chief economic adviser, and the man who called all of us “whiners” for being concerned about the economy.
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That's because WaMu's credit is junk. They will be bought by Chase relatively soon. Chase is looking to gain West Coast and Florida branches, which WaMu has a lot of. Wachovia is also looking like a good buy for Chase too, as that would give them the very coveted Middle Market lending in addition to West Coast and Florida.

Good ole Gramm-Leach. Never ceases to amaze me.
 
These photos are eerie, I just watched "ENRON: The Smartest Guys in the Room" documentary the night before this happened. Same scenes of employees walking out w/ whatever they can fit in their box...looks of emptiness on their faces.

Wonder who got out of this deal filthy rich before the axe came down?
 
Scepticalscribe said:
Re insurance firms, the policies are either sold on, or underwritten by others, or the insurance burden is shared, or the Government might be persuaded to step in, or the unfortunate public is sold down the river.
Cheers
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UK has a compensation scheme, the FSCS, as a statutory fund of last resort for this situation. The public is unlikely to be sold down the river. Broadly it covers 90% of claims (100% for statutory insurances like 3rd party motor).
 
Loge said:
UK has a compensation scheme, the FSCS, as a statutory fund of last resort for this situation. The public is unlikely to be sold down the river. Broadly it covers 90% of claims (100% for statutory insurances like 3rd party motor).
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Good to learn, but I still harbour doubts about the US. I was simply - rather flippantly - listing possible options, in response to an earlier post. In truth, the predilection of the private sector for greed, catastrophic mis judgement, and their desire to avoid any negative consequences or penalty for their actions is breath-taking, as is their desire to privatise profit while seeking to nationalise the costs of losses. It is obvious that some of the financial institutions involved felt that they were too big to be allowed to sink, and that this somehow conferred an utterly unwarranted immunity from consequences upon them, in their own eyes.

Anyway, Joepunk posted an excellent piece on the Glass-Steagall Act, its genesis and repeal which is something of an object lesson, as the inevitable - if tardy - solution will probably be some sort of take on this idea.
Cheers
 
doea anybody know how many employees lehman, aig and others have in manhattan? and how many in the entire US?

it must be ten's of thousands. if they all get layed off than that's a tragedy.
 
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