The Fall of Bear Stearns: A Quickie GuideThe Wall Street Journal today has a big story walking us through the events leading up to the collapse of Bear Stearns this past week. But perhaps you haven’t gotten to it yet. It’s so large and inky, and you’ve been busy, going to meetings and calculating your annual income should you become a high-class hooker. Still, you don’t want to look like an idiot, should someone, somewhere, bring up What Happened at Bear Stearns. You will want to nod knowledgably and pontificate on how it Might Affect the Economy. Which is why, using handy bullet points, we’ve summarized how the bank’s dalliance with subprime lending, coupled with a dope-smoking CEO, finally caught up with them in a stunning week-or-so period. To keep things in perspective, we started at the beginning. The very beginning.
in other news
Timothy Sykes: ‘The SEC Are Rapists’So, we don’t really know anybody at the Securities and Exchange Commission. But, statistically, we’d bet that they’re mostly not sexual criminals. They’re busy. But former hedge-fund manager and Internet hero Timothy Sykes begs to differ. “The SEC fucked me,” he told Dealbreaker.com. “The SEC are rapists. And everyone who’s been raped by them is too scared to come forward.” Wow. In addition to the grammatical conundrum that this statement raises (is it, “The SEC is a rapist”?), there’s the whole point that the SEC is basically out to protect the little people. You know, the ones who are the most rape-prone? But we’re arguing a small point here. It’s Friday, and you need someone in the financial world to ridicule who isn’t your own money manager.
Tim Sykes—Find Him Under ‘RichAssJew’ On MySpace — Says We Should Consider Ourselves Lucky He Closed His Fund, Otherwise We Never Would Have Heard About Him*, And What A Pity That Would’ve Been [DealBreaker]
Related: Has Every Wall Streeter Gone Insane? A Graphical Guide
