Today is one of the most extraordinary days in Wall Street's history (ML bought, Lehman bankrupt)

[MikeWB]

Frantic day on Wall Street as banks teeter
By Andrew Ross Sorkin, Ben White and Jenny Anderson
Monday, September 15, 2008
In one of the most extraordinary days in Wall Street's history, Merrill Lynch is near an 11th-hour deal to avert a deepening financial crisis while another storied securities firm, Lehman Brothers, hurtled toward liquidation, according to people briefed on the deal.

The dramatic turn of events was prompted by the cataclysm of losses that has shaken the American financial industry over the last 14 months.

The moves came after a weekend of frantic negotiations between U.S. government officials and Wall Street executives over how to avert a downward spiral in the markets. Questions still remain about how the market will react and whether other firms may still falter like AIG, the large insurer, and Washington Mutual, both of whose stocks fell precipitously last week.

Coming just a week after the government took control of mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the magnitude of the industry's reshaping is staggering: two of the most powerful firms on Wall Street, Merrill Lynch and Lehman, will disappear.

This once unthinkable outcome came after a series of emergency meetings at the Federal Reserve building in New York in which the fate of Lehman hung in the balance. In the meeting Federal Reserve officials and the leaders of major financial institutions were trying to complete a plan to rescue the stricken investment bank.

But as the weekend unfolded, Barclays and Bank of America, which had both considered buying all or part of Lehman, decided that they could not reach a deal without financial support from the U.S. government or other banks.

As a result, people briefed on the matter said that Lehman Brothers would file for bankruptcy protection, in the largest failure of an investment bank since the collapse of Drexel Burnham Lambert 18 years ago.

Lehman will seek to place its parent company, Lehman Brothers Holdings, into bankruptcy protection, as its subsidiaries remain solvent while the parent firm liquidates, these people said. A consortium of banks will provide a financial backstop to help provide an orderly winding down of the 158-year-old investment bank. And the Federal Reserve has agreed to accept lower-quality assets in return for loans from the government.

Lehman has retained the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges. The firm's restructuring head, Harvey Miller, also spearheaded Drexel's bankruptcy filing in February 1990.

As efforts to acquire Lehman faltered, Bank of America turned to Merrill Lynch and offered at least $38.25 billion in stock for that investment bank, people briefed on the negotiations said. The deal, valued at $25 to $30 a share, could be announced as soon as Sunday night in New York, these people said. Merrill shares closed Friday at $17.05.

Merrill's chief executive, John Thain, and Kenneth Lewis, Bank of America's chief executive, initiated talks Saturday, prompted by the reality that a Lehman bankruptcy would ripple through Wall Street and further cripple Merrill Lynch, people briefed on the negotiations said.

Merrill's 15,000 brokers would be combined with Bank of America's smaller group of wealth advisers. The entity would be run by Robert McCann, the head of Merrill's global wealth management business.

Gregory Fleming, Merrill's president, would be president of the combined bank's corporate and investment bank while Thomas Montag, a former Goldman executive who started at Merrill in August, would head all the merged company's all risk, trading and institutional sales.

The leading proposal to rescue Lehman had been to divide the bank into two entities, a "good bank" and a "bad bank." Under that last scenario, Barclays would have bought the parts of Lehman that have been performing well, while a group of 10 to 15 Wall Street companies would agree to absorb losses from the bank's troubled assets, according to two people briefed on the proposal. U.S. taxpayer money would not be included in such a deal, they said.

But that plan fell apart Sunday, all but assuring that Lehman would be forced to liquidate.

The overarching goal of the weekend talks had been prevent a quick liquidation of Lehman, a bank that is so big and so interconnected with others that its abrupt failure would send shock waves through the financial world. Of deep concern is what effect a Lehman failure would have on other securities firms, insurance companies and banks, which have come under mounting pressure in the markets.

Even as Lehman and Merrill played out, the insurance company, the American International Group, or AIG, was planning a major reorganization and a sale of its aircraft leasing business and other units to stabilize its finances, a person briefed on the company's strategy said Sunday.

AIG became one of the focuses at an emergency gathering of Wall Street executives over the weekend, and was trying to arrange a capital infusion in the face of possible credit downgrades.

It was unclear whether AIG would succeed in its capital search, but a person briefed on the discussions said it was seeking more than $40 billion even as it tried to sell assets to shore up its financial footing.

Among the businesses likely to be sold is AIG's aircraft leasing business, the International Lease Finance Corporation. Founded in 1973, the business has nearly 1,000 planes in its fleet.

Investors, afraid that AIG would have to absorb further write-downs in its already damaged mortgage securities and collateralized debt obligations, have driven down the company's shares in recent days. The stock closed Friday at $12.14 a share, a decline of 46 percent for the week.

[MikeWB]

I will consolidate all of the important financial news of today/tomorrow here in this thread. This is so important. Looks like we're near a total institutional banking collapse. By the end of this year, we'll probably lose all of the IBs.

U.S. asset prices tumble as Lehman talks falter
By Nick Edwards Reuters - 1 hour 12 minutes ago
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. asset prices sank late Sunday as talks to sell Lehman Brothers faltered, with the first official transactions of a new business week pushing stock market futures sharply lower in New York and the U.S. dollar sinking in the opening salvos of currency dealing in New Zealand.

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"It appears that Lehman will file for bankruptcy and the risk of an immediate tsunami is related to the unwind of derivative and swap-related positions worldwide in the dealer, hedge fund, and buyside universe," Bill Gross, the chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co (Pimco), told Reuters. Pimco oversees more than $812 billion in assets.

U.S. stock futures pointed to a steep opening fall on Wall Street on Monday, with uncertainty about the health of the U.S. financial sector running high, the fate of the 158-year old investment bank Lehman Brothers still unclear. In addition, a takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co and huge asset sales by American International Group were being talked about in markets.

S&P 500 futures <SPc2> fell 38 points and the Dow Jones industrial average futures <DJc2> sank 307 points, while Nasdaq 100 <NDc2> futures slid 45 points.

The U.S. dollar fell around a cent versus the euro in opening trade in Sydney and was quoted around to $1.4300 <EUR=> at 2300 GMT, compared with $1.4225 in late U.S. trade on Friday. Against the yen, the greenback dropped to 105.93/95 yen <JPY=> versus 107.86 yen and the Australian dollar extended gains above U.S. 80 cents <AUD=>.

On Sunday, a rare emergency trading session opened in New York to allow Wall Street dealers in the $455 trillion derivatives market to reduce their exposure to a potential bankruptcy filing by Lehman.

U.S. regulators and bankers were making last-ditch efforts on Sunday to prevent toxic assets from ailing Lehman Brothers spilling into global markets and rupturing investor faith in the international financial system.

"The extraordinary trading session held today to facilitate a partial unwind of these positions saw very little trading -- perhaps $1 billion total -- but at much wider spread levels for corporate bonds," Gross said.

While the fate of the U.S. financial system was the focus of most early trading, initial reports that the passing of Hurricane Ike through country's energy production centre had not severely damaged infrastructure in Texas saw benchmark oil prices fall more than to $2 to a six-month low below $99 a barrel.

"The oil market is selling off because the early indications show Ike didn't do as much damage as feared," said Chris Jarvis, senior analyst at Caprock Risk Management. "That said, this sell-off could prove to be a bit premature, since it could be a while before things get back to normal."

The U.S. Coast Guard said it had received reports of damage to offshore facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, but added details were still not available.

The U.S. government said on Sunday it loaned a total of 309,000 barrels of strategic crude to two oil refiners having trouble procuring supplies in the storm's wake, ConocoPhillips and Placid Oil.

Oil <CLc1> fell $2.38 to $98.80 a barrel by 2150 GMT after falling as low as $98.46 -- the lowest since February 26 -- adding to a steady downtrend prices since mid-July's peak of over $147 a barrel as evidence mounts that high energy costs and a weakening economy are cutting deeply into fuel consumption.

SPECIAL TRADING SESSIONS

The New York Mercantile Exchange opened a special energy trading session on Sunday due to increased trader interest about Hurricane Ike, which slammed into the Houston energy hub Saturday leaving a quarter of U.S. oil and refined fuel production idled and millions without power.

But it was the special trading session opened for financial derivatives dealers that sources said was initiated by the U.S. Federal Reserve, that set the wider tone for asset markets.

Trading involved credit, equity, rates, foreign exchange and commodity derivatives with the aim of reducing risk associated with a potential bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

"Trades are contingent on a bankruptcy filing at or before 11:59 p.m. New York time Sunday (0359 GMT)," said the statement. "If there is no filing, the trades cease to exist."

Britain's Barclays Plc , which had appeared to be the frontrunner to take over Lehman -- excluding its bad mortgage-related assets -- pulled out of the bidding early in the afternoon, according to a person familiar with the matter.

That raised the risk of a Lehman bankruptcy. Lehman hired law firm Weil Gotshal & Manges to prepare a potential bankruptcy filing, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday in its online edition, citing a person familiar with the matter.

A turbulent open on U.S. financial markets was expected despite the special session, said Mark Grant, managing director of structured finance at Southwest Securities, based in Dallas.

"The market is going to be spooked. People will be fearful and no one outside a very small group of people knows what Lehman going into liquidation will mean," he told Reuters.

[MikeWB]

ehman CEO Fuld's hubris contributed to meltdown
Sun Sep 14, 2008 7:45pm EDT
By Christian Plumb and Dan Wilchins - Analysis

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Not long ago, when Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld talked about "everyone's worst nightmare" he was referring to a massive fraud at French bank Societe Generale.

Just a few months later Fuld, a 30-year-veteran of Lehman who had ably steered it through near-death experiences like the Asian debt crisis of 1998, is living his own worst nightmare as the venerable investment bank stands on the verge of collapse.

How the 158-year-year institution came to this is a tale of hubris and overreaching -- and a big dose of bad luck.

Lehman's fall from grace was brutally fast. Until June, it had never even reported a quarterly loss as a public company.

As recently as March, Fuld was awarded a $22 million bonus for 2007 -- a generous pay package to be sure, but one that also reflected a year in which the bank's net profit had risen 5 percent to a record $4.2 billion.

But Lehman soon emerged as Wall Street's next domino as real estate loans and other toxic assets increasingly weighed on its balance sheet, especially after the collapse of Bear Stearns Cos Inc in March.

Still, few were willing to second-guess its 62-year-old chief executive.

"Fuld went wrong in not taking seriously enough the impairment of his balance sheet," said Charles Peabody, analyst at independent research firm Portales Partners.

"He had the typical hubris that any long-term CEO has: 'I built this thing, and it's got more value than the marketplace understands.'"

As the credit crisis worsened, Fuld was Wall Street's one seemingly teflon chief executive, keeping his job unchallenged even as CEOs fell at rivals like Bear, Merrill Lynch Cos Inc and Citigroup and as Fuld's own underlings including Chief Financial Officer Erin Callan were pushed out.

Lehman's board, which includes retired CEOs like Vodafone's Christopher Gent and IBM's John Akers, may have been too slow to challenge Fuld -- a former competitive squash player -- as its share price spiraled lower.

GORILLA

As recently as June, rival CEOs like Lazard's Bruce Wasserstein were still professing confidence in Fuld, nicknamed "The Gorilla" for his intimidating presence.

Fuld had endured in-fighting that led to the firm's sale to Shearson/American Express in 1984 and was running the firm when it was spun off in 1994.

This time, though, he was no match for the implosion of the mortgage boom on which he had staked the firm's fortunes.

Lehman, until recently Wall Street's fourth-largest investment bank, for years did a big business in originating mortgages, re-packaging them and selling them onto other investors.

Lehman was the top U.S. underwriter of mortgage bonds in 2007 and 2006, grabbing about 10 percent of the market.

But as the U.S. housing market went from boom to bust, it ended up being unable to unload many of the most toxic loans.

"Dick went wrong three to four years ago when Lehman bought these assets, now he's paying the price," said Ralph Cole, portfolio manager at Ferguson Wellman Capital Management in Portland, Oregon.

"I don't think he knew when he was investing in mortgages where this could lead, and how important confidence is."

At key junctures Fuld seems to have played a game of brinksmanship, refusing to accept offers that could have rescued the firm because they didn't reflect the value he saw in the bank.

As recently as August, Fuld may have had a chance to sell a 25 percent stake in Lehman for $4 billion to $6 billion to state-run Korea Development Bank, but by some accounts he balked, saying the offer was too low, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

Differences over price also thwarted talks to sell up to half of Lehman shares to China's CITIC Securities in August, the Financial Times reported.

"Dick Fuld really blew it," said William Smith, chief executive officer of Smith Asset Management in New York. "How many opportunities did he have to sell Lehman?"

"There's a possibility this stock could zero out," Smith said. "It happened under his watch."

[MikeWB]

US in 'once-in-a-century' financial crisis : Greenspan   

Sep 14 02:18 PM US/Eastern

The United States is mired in a "once-in-a century" financial crisis which is now more than likely to spark a recession, former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan said Sunday.
The talismanic ex-central banker said that the crisis was the worst he had seen in his career, still had a long way to go and would continue to effect home prices in the United States.

"First of all, let's recognize that this is a once-in-a-half-century, probably once-in-a-century type of event," Greenspan said on ABC's "This Week."

Asked whether the crisis, which has seen the US government step in to bail out mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, was the worst of his career, Greenspan replied "Oh, by far."

"There's no question that this is in the process of outstripping anything I've seen, and it still is not resolved and it still has a way to go," Greenspan said.

"And indeed, it will continue to be a corrosive force until the price of homes in the United States stabilizes.

"That will induce a series of events around the globe which will stabilize the system."

Greenspan was also asked whether the United States had a greater-than 50 percent chance of escaping a recession.

"No, I think it's less than 50 percent.

"I can't believe we could have a once-in-a-century type of financial crisis without a significant impact on the real economy globally, and I think that indeed is what is in the process of occurring."

The former Federal Reserve chairman also predicted that the financial crisis would see the failure of more major financial institutions, even as embattled Wall Street investment giant Lehman Brothers scrambled to find a buyer.

"In and of itself that does not need to be a problem.

"It depends on how it is handled and how the liquidations take place. And indeed we shouldn't try to protect every single institution."

On Saturday, Democrat Barack Obama's campaign seized on a warning from Greenspan about John McCain's tax plans to portray the Republican as economically reckless.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television Friday, Greenspan said the nation could not afford 3.3 trillion dollars of tax cuts proposed by McCain without matching cuts in spending.

Greenspan, a long-time friend of McCain and a Republican, said about the Arizona senator's plans to extend massive tax cuts imposed by President George W. Bush: "I'm not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money."

[Rockclimber]

Wow, this is some serious stuff. Thanks MIke. Crazier days are around the corner. And f Greenspan, that son of a bitch. He knew it then as he knows it now. Talismanic, give me a break.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Logically, a person can look at all of this and see how screwed it all is.

The Jewish Financial Lies that created the US/UK banking systems are coming home to roost on Wallstreet.

Amazing to watch.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Former Cheerleading:
---------------------------

Lehman Brothers: A super-hot machine
How CEO Dick Fuld transformed the notoriously fractious firm from Wall Street also-ran to global powerhouse.
FORTUNE Magazine
Andy Serwer, FORTUNE editor at large
April 11, 2006: 8:06 AM EDT

Lehman Brothers, a 156-year-old firm that has had numerous brushes with death is now enjoying its greatest run ever. Richard S. Fuld Jr., 59, took over the notoriously fractious Lehman Brothers 13 years ago, when it was a forgotten subsidiary within the rat's nest that was Shearson/American Express. Driven partly by those who dismissed him and his firm as second- or even third-rate, Fuld transformed Lehman from Wall Street weakling to global powerhouse.

Consider this: When Lehman went public in 1994, it had only $75 million in earnings, with a paltry return on equity of 2.2%. Fast-forward to 2005, and the turnaround is breathtaking: Lehman (Research) booked $32 billion in revenues, $3.2 billion in profits, and hit 19.4% in return on equity. Over the past decade Lehman's stock is up 29% per annum on average, highest of any major securities firm and 16th best among the FORTUNE 500.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/10/news/co ... /index.htm

[MikeWB]

Guys, as some of you may know, I'm a finance guy. I have an MBA with concentration in finance and also have CFA cert. Today I've been watching this thing develop in real time and I'm still peeled at my bloomberg terminal. It's nuts what's going on. This is just a tip of the iceberg. I have no idea what the aftermath of this is gonna look like but it's really, really bad. Currently, DOW is down about 300 points and this is just pre-market trading! What happens tomorrow morning will also depend on how Asia responds to this crisis. Hang seng is currently down about 35 points and they started trading few hours ago. If Asian indexes don't slide too much, we might be able to avoid another black monday.

You can follow this page or some other free financial service to see what's going on:

http://money.cnn.com/data/premarket/

It's gonna be a long night and a long day tomorrow, that's for sure.

[MikeWB]

It's a done deal. Lehman to file for bankruptcy and ML is sold.

From WSJ - no free link yet.

Bank of America Reaches Deal for Merrill
By MATTHEW KARNITSCHNIG, CARRICK MOLLENKAMP and DAN FITZPATRICK
September 15, 2008
In a rushed bid to ride out the storm sweeping American finance, 94-year-old Merrill Lynch & Co. agreed late Sunday to sell itself to Bank of America Corp. for roughly $44 billion.

The deal, which was being worked out in 48 hours of frenetic negotiating, could instantly reshape the U.S. banking landscape, making the nation's prime behemoth even bigger. The boards of the two companies approved the deal Sunday evening, according to people familiar with the matter.

Driven by Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis, Bank of America has already made dozens of acquisitions large and small, including the purchase of ailing mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. earlier this year. In adding Merrill Lynch, it would control the nation's largest force of stock brokers as well as a well-regarded investment bank.

A combination would create a bank of vast reach, involved in nearly every nook and cranny of the financial system, from credit cards and auto loans to bond and stock underwriting, merger advice and wealth management.

It would also show how the credit crisis has created opportunities for financially sound buyers. At $44 billion, or roughly $29 a share, Merrill would be sold at about two-thirds of its value of one year ago, and half its all-time peak value of early 2007. Merrill shares changed hands at $17.05 each on Friday, after falling sharply in the wake of Lehman's looming demise.

"Why would Bank of America do this?" said analyst Nancy Bush at NAB Research LLC in Annandale, N.J. "Ken Lewis always likes to buy the biggest thing he can. So why not this? You are master of the universe, basically."

Bank of America and Merrill Lynch wouldn't comment on any discussions.

Merrill would give Bank of America strength around the world, including emerging markets such as India. And Merrill is also strong in underwriting, an area Bank of America identified last week at an investors' conference where it would like to be more aggressive.

Dramatic Deal

A deal would be all the more dramatic because Merrill, upon the arrival of Chief Executive John Thain, did more than many U.S. financial giants to insulate itself from the financial crisis that began last year. It raised large amounts of capital, purged itself of toxic assets and sold big equity stakes, such as its holding in financial-information giant Bloomberg. That Merrill has opted to sell itself thus underscores the severity of crisis.

The integration of Merrill, known for its proud, and sometimes testy, brokerage force, could turn out to be the biggest test of Mr. Lewis's career. Typically, the bank has made one big deal and then taken time to carefully merge the two institutions. But in recent years, acquisitions have come at a furious pace. In 2004, the bank bought FleetBoston Financial Corp. A year later, the bank agreed to buy MBNA Corp., the credit-card firm. In 2007, Bank of America bought Chicago's LaSalle Bank as part of the break-up of Dutch bank ABN-Amro Holding NV. Then came this year's purchase of Countrywide.

As of Sunday evening, a deal had not yet been signed, said people briefed on the discussions. And other last-second bidders could emerge from the woodwork. Yet with news of the Bank of America talks breaking Sunday, it became all the more difficult for Merrill and Mr. Thain to rebuff a deal. Should the talks collapse, most on the Street were expecting Merrill's shares to fall even further amid widespread worries about independent broker-dealers.

Inside the Fed meetings in Lower Manhattan this weekend, there was a general worry that Merrill could be the next to fall after Lehman. Through the weekend, federal officials including Federal Reserve Bank of New York head Timothy Geithner made it clear that they strongly encouraged a deal to sell Merrill, said people familiar with the matter said.

If struck, a deal would come together at breakneck speed. On Friday, Bank of America's top executives were pushing for a deal with Lehman Brothers, scrambling to perform due diligence on Lehman's books. Just 48 hours later, they were locked in discussion with Merrill and its top executives.

During the flurry of historic dealmaking this weekend, Merrill approached Morgan Stanley about a possible deal, which would have united two of Wall Street's oldest brands, according to a person familiar with the talks. But the talks didn't go anywhere because there wasn't enough time for Morgan Stanley to review the idea and Merrill wanted to do the deal quickly, this person said. Merrill was also stepping up talks with commercial banks both in Europe and the U.S. While Mr. Thain had once orchestrated a trans-Atlantic deal for his old firm, NYSE Euronext, in this race, a U.S. deal proved the quickest, best option for Merrill.

'The Ultimate Realist'

"I think John Thain at Merrill is the ultimate realist," Ms. Bush said, the analyst, who expected federal regulators to bless the deal by relaxing deposit limits for bank-holding companies. "He knows if Lehman goes under he is not far behind. He wants to cut the best deal he can."

In the past 15 months, Merrill and Lehman have both had tens of billions of dollars worth of risky, illiquid assets carried on balance sheets that were leveraged at a debt-to-equity ratio of more than 20 to one. When the credit crunch hit in mid-2007, the assets kept deteriorating in value and couldn't easily be sold, eating into both firms' capital cushion. Recently, Lehman's balance sheet topped $600 billion and Merrill's $900 billion.

Merrill's one-time chief Stan O'Neal was ousted in October 2007, and his successor, Mr. Thain, tried to repair the firm's balance sheet by arranging an infusion of more than $6 billion in capital starting last December by investors led by Temasek Holdings, a Singapore government investment fund.

But as the losses kept coming this year, Mr. Thain was forced in July to sell a huge slug of more than $30 billion in collateralized debt obligations at a price of just 22 cents on the dollar. That step required the firm to raise still more capital, under painful terms that re-priced some of the December stock sales at about half the original price.

One top Merrill executive lamented the pending sale of the venerable company, saying "it's sad but inevitable." This executive said that he was pleased it was Merrill, rather than rival broker Morgan Stanley, that was hatching a deal with Bank of America.

The fate of both Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs will be front and center Monday morning, as the Street wakes up to a world where the independent broker-dealer are increasingly thin in number.

This tumultuous year has made it clear that investment banks like Lehman and Bear Stearns face vulnerabilities that commercial banks such as J.P. Morgan and Bank of America are less prone to. The investment banks must constantly depend on short- and medium-term money markets to fund their operations. Commercial banks, meanwhile, can count on more stable consumer deposit bases.

In a highly volatile market, some advantages accrue to banks that can rely on those more stable deposit bases.

At Merrill, "we became convinced that for investment banking to be possible, we need to be part of a much bigger capitalized commercial bank," the Merrill executive said.

Merrill acted to avoid the same fate as Bear Stearns and Lehman, some analysts said. "Bear didn't think it could happen to them and Lehman didn't think it could happen to them either," said analyst David Trone of Fox-Pitt, Kelton. "I think management looked at Bear and Lehman and said we're not going to go down that slope, we're going to try and get our shareholders something before we end up in the same camp."

Lehman Expected to File for Bankruptcy Protection
SEPTEMBER 14, 2008, 5:55 PM
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TOPICSInvestment Banking, Lehman's Struggles INDUSTRIESFinancial Services

According to people briefed on the matter, Lehman Brothers will file for bankruptcy protection on Sunday night, in the largest failure of an investment bank since the collapse of Drexel Burnham Lambert 18 years ago.

Lehman will seek to place its parent company, Lehman Brothers Holdings, into bankruptcy protection, while its subsidiaries will remain solvent while the firm liquidates its holdings, these people said. A consortium of banks will provide a financial backstop to help provide an orderly winding down of the 158-year-old investment bank. And the Federal Reserve has agreed to accept lower-quality assets in return for loans from the government.

But Lehman's filing is unlikely to resemble those of other companies that seek bankruptcy protection. Because of the harsher treatment that federal bankruptcy law applies to financial-services firm, Lehman cannot hope to reorganize and survive as a going concern. It will instead liquidate its holdings.

It was not clear whether the government would appoint a trustee to supervise Lehman's liquidation, or how big the financial backstop would be.

Lehman's broker-deal subsidiaries would not be a part of the bankruptcy filing. Those entities must file under Chapter 7 rules, which are the procedures for liquidation, under the assumption that it is the best way to protect customers. The Securities Investor Protection Corporation would handle the liquidation of such brokerages, and bankruptcy lawyers say that customers are likely to receive their holdings back.

Moreover, changes to the bankruptcy code mean that counterparties to Lehman's credit-default swaps can seize their collateral at any time, posing an enormous potential risk to the entire financial markets. Investment banks, hedge funds and other financial players labored throughout Sunday to offset their exposure to Lehman, moving their contracts to other firms.

Lehman has retained the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges to prepare its bankruptcy filing. The firm's restructuring head, Harvey Miller, also worked on Drexel's bankruptcy back in 1990.

Eric Dash, Ben White and Michael J. de la Merced

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

I wonder the downstread effects of this overall. It looks massive.  With PIMCO's Bill Gross talking about diversifying out of Bonds recently, several massive financial waves of destruction are yet to hit. With the Bond insurers going down recently, it will be the last man standing.

[Anonymous]

REMEMBER THE "PROTOCOLS FOR ECONOMIC COLLAPSE" THREAD?

(originally published in 2004 and keep that in mind and compare it to recent events)

"Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost. Everybody knows the fight was fixed. The poor stay poor, the rich get rich. That's how it goes, Everybody knows" - Leonard Cohen

And this is how the U.S. Treasury would handle an economic collapse. It's called the 6900 series of protocols. It would start with declaring a force majeure, which would immediately be interpreted by the marketplaces as a de facto repudiation of debt. Then the SEC and the various regulatory exchanges would anticipate the market's decline, hour by hour -- when Japan's markets opened the next day, what would happen when the European markets, and all the inter- linkages of the global markets. On the second day, US Special Forces would be dropped in by parachute in the cities where the twelve Federal Reserve district banks are located.

The origin of these protocols comes from the Department of Defense. This is contingency planning for a variety of post-collapse scenarios. Those scenarios would include, obviously, military collapse, World War III, in other words, and its aftermath. What we're talking about now is aftermath -- how the aftermath would be handled.

One does not necessarily know how the events would transpire that would cause the collapse, whether it's military collapse or economic collapse. In World War III, it would become obvious -- when the mushroom cloud started to appear over cities.

Economic collapse scenarios were always premised on the basis of a US declaration of force majeure on debt service. It's a very extensive scenario. The scenarios are all together, i.e., military, economic, political and social complete destabilization leading to collapse. Then they break down individual scenarios. In the economic collapse scenario, the starting point would be the United States Treasury declaring a force majeure on debt service, which is de facto repudiation, and that's how it would be interpreted by the world's capital marketplaces. Then the scenario goes on from there. The US Treasury would obviously declare a force majeure sometime after the European markets had settled down. In other words, they had gone out on the day, which means 11:38 a.m. EDT, our time. They'd wait until the European markets closed, and the US markets had been open for a couple of hours. That's when they'd determine how to begin the process of unwinding or controlling the collapse to the best extent possible, mainly because they know that the greatest hedge pressure would be people seeking to use other markets to hedge their long exposure in the United States and that the US would be the biggest seller in all the rest of the world's markets. Therefore you would want to declare the force majeure when the rest of the world's markets closed. The declaration of force majeure would be precipitated by the declaration that the United States is no longer able to service its debt. That's pretty simple. Who makes that decision? The Treasury Department. The President does not make that decision. The Secretary of the Treasury does. He has that authority. You might ask -- wouldn't he have his arm twisted not to do that?

The answer is that if there isn't any money left to service the debt, it doesn't make any difference what the current regime might want to do.

The day of reckoning is now coming. What has happened in the interim, from 2001 to present, is dynamic, global economic deterioration. The economic deterioration visited upon the United States by Bushonomics is not a localized event. It is, in fact, global. We have a planet now that is sinking into a sea of red ink.

The United States is consuming 80% of the planet's savings rate to finance its debt. The central banks of Germany, Japan and Saudi Arabia are no longer the powerhouses they used to be. Their reserves have now been substantially depleted. They can, therefore, no longer hide the fact that they own a certain number, likely in the trillions of dollars, of U.S. Treasury debt that isn't being serviced, because they can't hide it through bookkeeping tricks anymore because their reserves are so depleted.

Therefore somebody has covertly been putting demands on the Bush- Cheney regime for payment. Why do you think 2900 metric tons of gold is depleted from U.S. inventory since March of `01?

Why do you think that $2 billion in currency seized from Iraq last May is now unaccounted for?

Someone is putting demands on the Bush-Cheney regime. Someone is saying to the Bushonian Cabal that -- You've got to start servicing this debt because we, foreign central banks, are in nations - European and Asian - whose reserves are now nearly exhausted.

Who could be putting that kind of pressure on them?

It has to be coming from whoever is organizing this thing at the very top, which I would tend to think has got to be most likely a cabal of people that would involve Henry Kissinger, James Baker, George Schultz, possibly William Simon. It would be somebody at the very top that is familiar with how to do this. It would have to be someone familiar with finances.

So would this be one faction of a cabal blackmailing or forcing another faction? No, it's not really blackmailing. It's being done out of desperation. The German, Japanese and Saudi central banks are saying to the Bushonian cabal, You've got to start servicing this debt because we don't have the reserves to cover you anymore. We can no longer make it appear that the debt is being serviced because our own reserves are so substantively depleted. Therefore you must begin to cover this debt. If you don't, then, at some point, we will have to publicly admit in order to save our own necks -- that we were the end buyers of a lot of stealth debt, a lot of debt that your Treasury issued illegally and has never serviced. That would then expose the whole cabal.

The Kissinger-Baker faction are at the top of how this was done on the economic side of the equation. They were not the original insiders so much, but the managers of the conspiracy from the U.S. Treasury, to wit, the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve role-play the part.

Take Henry Kissinger. It may not have occurred to anyone why in the last 3 years Henry Kissinger has been back in Washington more than he has in the last 30 years. And why are all these quiet meetings in Washington with alleged senior Bush-Cheney regime officials, as foreign news services endlessly put it. It's because Kissinger is the point man. He's the one that is telling them the disposition of other foreign central banks.

Kissinger would probably also be involved in transfer or hypothecation of any assets from the cabal. In other words, they're being stolen from the American people by the Bush-Cheney regime and the Bushonian Cabal, and they are being used to hypothecate, transfer, service, or otherwise carry this debt held by certain foreign central banks.

The process of unraveling has already begun because of ever-spiraling Bushonian budget deficits. The Bush-Cheney regime, even in its overt policies (now they're overt political, economic, social and military policies) is generating $600-billion-plus deficit per year, which is consuming 80% of the planet's net savings rate.

It doesn't have the slack. In other words, it can't refinance stealth debt by issuing more stealth debt anymore. Nor can they bleed money out of the system like they could in the 1980s by hiding it when the overt policies of the Bush-Cheney regime are already producing a budget deficit of 6% of Gross Domestic Product. There is no other mechanism that they could use anymore to hide expansion of debt that could be used to service said stealth debt, and they are, frankly, running out of assets that they can steal from the American people.

So the proverbial day of reckoning is coming. The Bush-Cheney regime (and I give them credit for this) are telling the American people what's coming, knowing the American people are too stupid to understand. They are telling the American people about the re- institution of the Gold Confiscation Act and the sudden scrapping of the Treasury's emergency post-collapse gold note scheme to maintain domestic liquidity.

David Walker, US Comptroller General and chief of the GAO has said that should the Bush-Cheney regime be re-ensconced into power and, hence, the scourge of Bushonomics persist, that the United States could no longer service its debt beyond 2009. They're not hiding it from anybody anymore. They are telling you what's happening. Now, what does that mean? The key is in what Walker is saying when he says the debt can no longer be serviced. I've been asked this on the radio shows. People have noticed what Walker said because he's out in the news more often than he used to be. It's unusual for the Comptroller General of the United States, which is a rather arcane position, to be out in the news so much.

It simply means that when he says the United States will no longer be able to sustain Bushonian budget deficits, he means that by 2009, if Bush-Cheney have a second term in office, the United States will be consuming 100% of the planet's savings rate to finance Bushonian budget deficits.

Therefore, if the planet can no longer generate any more liquidity to lend to the United States, one of three things have to happen: A) There has to be a sudden and dramatic reduction in federal spending. There are only two places that can come from. There would have to be an immediate $100-billion cut in defense spending, which would end any hopes the Republicans had of getting into office for years to come because it would destroy any confidence the NFWCs (Naïve Flag Waving Crowd) had in them. Or you would have to scrap the multi-trillion- dollar Bushonian tax cuts for the Republican rich, something that's equally unpalatable.

The other option, B, as Paul O'Neill mentioned, is a dramatic increase in the rate of federal income taxation from the current nominal rate of 28% to 65%, which is what the Treasury Department estimated would be required post-2009 to provide the U.S. Treasury with sufficient revenues to continue to service debt.

The third option, or C, becomes the declaration of a force majeure on credit service of U.S. Treasury debt by the United States Treasury, which is tantamount and would be accurately construed as de facto debt repudiation by the United States of America.

There are other signs to look for. They're not going to happen now, but if Bush-Cheney is re-elected, you'll begin to see more signs that the end is coming. I know a lot of people may disagree, but you wait and see. If Bush-Cheney has a second term, see if they do not institute some currency expatriation control. See if that doesn't come in the way Nixon tried it in May-June of 1971.

In the second term, there will be some sort of currency expatriation control in the United States, but there will also be loopholes that will allow the large money to escape. The restrictions will apply to the 10- and 20-thousand-dollar people. It ain't going to apply to the 10- and 20-million-dollar people. It would be self-defeating to do that.

When that day comes, in other words, when the U.S. Treasury declares a force majeure on debt, it wouldn't be broad-cast on mainstream media. There's no sense because the American people don't even understand what it means. But the announcement would actually be put on the Federal Reserve wire system, which would, of course, immediately be picked up by all media outlets anyway.

The U.S. Treasury would declare a force majeure on debt after the Asian and European markets closed, probably at 12:30 p.m. EDT. The reason why that hour was always selected is because Asian and European markets close. It's also the lunch hour for the markets. It's when you're going to have the fewest people on the floor of the exchanges. That would be the ideal time to make such an announcement.

A few seconds after that announcement was made, all United States markets, both equities debt and commodities i.e., stock, bonds, commodities, that have trading collars or permissible daily limits would all be limit-offered with pools. Limit-offered means that there are more sellers at the limit i.e., limit down, than there are buyers.

So-called 'pools' would immediately begin to form, probably a thousand contracts every few minutes. 'Limit-offered with pools' - this is trader language. Pools to sell 2,000 lots, 3,000 lots. That means, the number of sellers over and above the available buyers at the limit- offered price. That would begin to build.

By 1:00, the news would begin to sink in because it would take awhile before panic selling would arise from the public. This news is being released at lunch hour.

A lot of the American people initially would not even understand the temerity of the news. You would see professional selling first, and as that professional selling intensified over the afternoon, the SEC, the CFTC, NASDAQ, and various market regulatory authorities would begin to institute certain emergency market protocols. This would be the installation of the so-called 'declaration of fast market conditions,' for instance; the declaration of 'no more stop orders,' the declaration of 'fill at any price,' etc. in a desperate bid to maintain liquidity.

That first day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and related indices on a percentage basis would lose about 20% of their value by the close of business that day. The real impact would come overnight when the American people found out what this was all about and when it was explained to them.

At 7:30 a.m. EDT, the Tokyo markets would open, and no price would be affixed for probably three or four hours into the session due to the avalanche of selling. Once prices were established, the government of Japan would close all of its financial markets. Europe would not even open. All European governments would close all capital exchanges the next day.

The United States would, in order to accommodate global electronic trading, attempt to open the market on the second day, which they would do, regardless of price, just to maintain some liquidity. At the end of Day Two, the Dow Jones and related indices, would have lost two thirds of their value, and prices would be set accordingly.

On Day Three, the New York Stock Exchange, the SEC and other related agencies would recommend to the United States Treasury and the Federal Reserve that all markets be closed. That would be on the morning of Day Three. Eleven a.m., the Federal Reserve would then order all domestic banks closed. All of the twelve Federal Reserve district banks would (30 minutes later) have special U.S. forces parachuted in and around them to secure whatever gold bullion reserves they had left.

Day Three, 9:00 p.m., the President of the United States would declare a state of martial law. All financial transactions would come to an end. The Treasury would act to formally de-monetize the U.S. dollar and declare it worthless.

This would be totally unprecedented. In the past, collapses have been temporary and have been brought back up. But what we're talking about now is the end.

These protocols that I'm referring to aren't even all that secret. They were publicly available all through the Clinton era. These are Treasury protocols that were instituted mostly in the late 1970s when the Treasury and Federal Reserve began to feel that it was important to have an emergency-collapse protocol in place.

What precipitated the timing of this was the inflationary spiral of the late 1970s. The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve were both concerned that this inflationary spiral, which was occurring not only domestically but globally, might lead to a global, uncontrollable hyper-inflation that the Federal Reserve or major central banks could not stop by traditional means, i.e., by raising interest rates and contracting money supply.

There was also the recognition, of course, that global central reserve bank bullion inventories had been so depleted over the previous 30 years that any re-institution of a species currency, even on a temporary basis, and even within a regional or individual nation-state basis, was no longer possible.

This is an analogy. In a military scenario, it's like the President of the United States pushing the final red button -- the commit button. The Treasury Secretary of the United States has a similar mechanism. It's called the yellow button, the commit button. The Secretary of Defense has the same system. This is what happens. Computer program starts to institute these protocols. Imagine the complexity of trying the manage all this. I think it's going to happen all simultaneously. There are hundreds of different agencies involved, both domestically and internationally. In order to maintain liquidity for as long as possible, it has to be extremely well-coordinated, and there must be existing collapse protocols that can be used.

The reason I was familiar with them was because I used to see the U.S. Treasury 6900 Series Collapse Protocol, 6903, 6904 there'll be A, B, and so on which keyed in to the Department of Defense to be incorporated within the Department of Defense's own World War III scenario and various types of military/ political/ social instability/ war/ pestilence, chaos, etc. scenarios.

All federal agencies had individual collapse protocols that ultimately got coordinated through the Department of Defense. Obviously, the Department of Defense would be the ultimate coordinator because it would need to have special forces available, on a stand-by basis, ready, that could quickly parachute into areas all over the country, into the cities particularly, to secure federal properties and assets.

And that's literally how it would begin. By the end of the third day, it would be all over -- a state of martial law. We're not talking about war, now; this is just economic collapse.

There's no military implication here, no political, no social implication or policy directive thereunto. This is strictly economic collapse. By the end of Day Three, effectively, all banks in the world will be shut down, all paper currencies will become valueless. Martial law would be declared. There would be no continuing transactions, at least for a period of time, of commodities. All providers of fuels and foods would be shut down automatically.

They have this in great detail too. U.S. Department of Defense Special 117th Assault Unit would parachute in to seize control of the cattle yards in Oklahoma City. This is how well it's planned. In other words, economic collapse would automatically involve expansive military action and control.

By the end of the third day, when you no longer have a domestic medium of exchange, you have to have secured food and fuel stocks. You've got to have troops that have secured distribution points where there is food and fuel stocks, warehouses, tanks, etc. Otherwise people are just going to go get them, and the people have to know that if they try to go break into that store and steal that loaf of bread, they're going to be shot.

Protocols for environmental disasters are called 'scaling-circle scenarios.' 'Scaling circles' is a Department of Defense euphemism. It's also used in FEMA, OEM and other emergency management services. In environmental catastrophes, which are going to become national or global, it's got to start someplace. It's going to start in one very small, specific area. Therefore what happens is that the immediate force containment is the greatest in the first circle, to try to contain the spread of the disaster and keep it within that circle.

The environmental problem, to whatever extent it's possible, before it spreads, will be neutralized or mitigated, in order to keep that catastrophe within that circle, or, if it is likely that it is to escape that circle, to attack whatever it is in such a fashion as to mitigate its strength and its ability to contaminate or otherwise affect other areas.

In the case of earthquakes, for instance, affecting the west coast, beginning at Mt. Rainier and moving southward -- that's a different type of scenario. That does not include as much Department of Defense involvement. It includes separate protocols, wherein mostly FEMA and OEM act as the senior coordinating agencies between municipal, county and state disaster and containment, which is called Disaster and Containment Units. Federal troops would only be brought in for the purposes of maintaining control.

In a military or economic collapse situation, National Guard units would provide any spare help they could in combating whatever the problem is. Federal troops would be used in order to have the specific authority simply to shoot anyone. There are plans for all sorts of scenarios. The economic-disaster scenario is the one I always found the most intriguing because it is the one that is least understood by the American people.

Military control would be necessary when lines begin to form at the banks, people trying to access their money. But that wasn't even anticipated as a big problem. Lines would form at the banks, but it was not even envisioned until sometime on Day Three because the American people wouldn't get it. It would be announced that the stock markets are down 2000 or 3000 points, and since we've always been taught they'll come back, the people would still be buying stocks.

You could count on everybody remaining in ignorance all the way down because the American people have never been taught Economics 101. The American people wouldn't realize the full extent of it until the markets were closed on the third day, or until the time when they went down to cash a check and the bank was closed with soldiers out in front. Then they would go down and see the gas station's closed. They see the local supermarket has been shuttered, and there's federal troops in front of it. Then they might begin to catch on. And remember -- it's not just federal troops. In emergency-collapse protocols, even before the declaration of a formal state of emergency or a state of martial law, the local military authorities within any given county or jurisdiction have the ability to essentially militarize anyone, that is, any civilian. This would be more than just deputizing civilians. It's federal. In other words, they would have the ability to militarize and give military authority to a civilian force. This would include not only police and the sheriffs and state police, but all local law enforcement that exists below the state level would be immediately militarized. They wouldn't take just anybody like they did in Iraq. It would be like the military when they call for volunteers. Then they'd have everybody and their brother-in-law volunteering, waving around the American flag and so on.

You've got a lot of pickup-driving guys in this country with the gun racks in the back and the Confederate flag flying. So you start waving the American flag in front of their face and say, Hey, you're going to get your chance you always wanted -- to fit your potbelly inside an army uniform and carry a gun and shoot people. How appealing would that be?

And besides, if you do this, then you're going to get to eat.

In other words, this is how it would unfold over three days, but, in fact, very few Americans would know what to do about it or how to take any precautions. They wouldn't have a clue because they don't understand enough about economics to know what is happening. So that's what it is -- Economic Armageddon. If the Bush-Cheney regime is re- installed into power, that is effectively what Comptroller General David Walker is saying.

In conclusion, since there is very little the people of the United States can do to protect themselves. We're not going to make any suggestions of how to protect yourselves because there's very little you can do.

We could tell you to go out and buy gold coins and bury them in the coffee can in the back yard and go to your nearest survivalist store, but, frankly, that's useless. In the last analysis, it's a lot of hype. There is very little the average US citizen could do.

The only thing that can prevent this, as the Comptroller alluded to when he was asked by Barbara Walters, How do we prevent reaching the problem by 2009? He said simply, "A change of regimes."

So how do you prevent it? Don't vote for Bush and Cheney -- and hope that Bush does not use his emergency powers to cancel or postpone the election by edict, powers which you, the flag-waving citizens, have given him.

All flag-waving citizens, be warned. If you want to vote for Bush- Cheney again, make sure you got plenty of Spam on hand.

Here's an interesting and humorous aside. A couple of days ago, Hormel Foods, which makes Spam, announced that in the last six months there have been record sales of Spam in the United States the survivalists' food of choice. After all, they pride themselves on the fact, as the spokesman for Hormel said, "It is the only food product you can buy with an expiration that's 50 years."

When everything goes to hell, when all that man has created has turned to dust again, the final legacy is going to be Spam. It will be the last surviving item -- when the anthropologists of 20 thousand years from now are digging sites and they see these enormous mountains of unopened cans of Spam They'll have monuments to the past out of Spam.

So if Bush-Cheney has a second term in office, there will be some sort of currency restriction, like Nixon did in 1971. On April 13, 2004, Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary John Boine talked about potential currency restrictions. He used the word that's going to fuel the flames of the survivalist and gloom-and-doom collapse people.

It's very, very telling that the U.S. Treasury may institute a restriction on the amount of U.S. dollars that can be converted into gold.

Furthermore, he intimated (and I suspected that this was coming, although this wouldn't actually become law until Bush-Cheney was in office for second term one way or another) that the Bush-Cheney regime determines that the Gold Confiscation Act gives to Treasury the power for so-called forced disclosure of gold holdings.

I'm not quite sure of the language of the Gold Confiscation Act from 1933. It just says, "compelled", as in citizens are lawfully compelled to redeem gold for script. I don't think there was any such provision, which he was inferring that there is. That was FDR's "Raw Deal" of 1934, when people were coerced into giving up their gold. But nowhere in this act does it specifically authorize the Treasury to mandate citizens to report their gold holdings. So if this gets any press at all, particularly within the circles of gold bugs and so on, watch out.

Furthermore, on Washington Journal they were talking about how FEMA has recommended to the Office of Homeland Security to have increased restrictions regarding citizen hoarding of long-term food and fuel supplies. That's pretty sinister too.

What they're talking about is the purchase of long-term so-called stores of survival food. FEMA was talking about some sort of restriction preventing people from accumulating food stores; putting it simply, that's what it means. The second point was to increase restrictions that already exist.

FEMA was recommending even tighter restrictions on citizens building their own private property underground storage tanks for the purposes of long-term storage of fuel. The real intent of this is is threefold: a) to restrict citizens' ability to hoard food; b) restrict citizens' ability to hoard long-term storage of fuel; c) the forced identification of citizens to reveal food and fuel stocks they may be hoarding.

And that, in my opinion, is the real essence. The Bush-Cheney regime was scared of having the FEMA angle put into the equation because they knew what it means and how people would interpret it.

They have tried to use environmental legislation to restrict people's ability to build fuel storage facilities on their own property -- to get around what the true intent of that was.

But the bigger picture is that if you start to limit citizens' ability to hoard fuel and food and shake them up by potential forced identification of gold holdings or forced redemption.

In other words, what you don't want is citizens who have the ability to store a lot of food and fuel and to own gold because they would be able to resist state control in the future.

You've got to have every citizen on a rationing card to control the civilian population. You can't have citizens out there hoarding food and fuel because then people can say to government,"I ain't taking a rationing card, baby, with my national ID card. I don't have to. You can't control me through food and fuel and ever-worthless paper currency."

I used to make fun of these people. But now, things have come full circle on this debate. The Bush-Cheney regime is making it increasingly clear through their small changes in policy. Not a lot of people monitor these decisions, but I do. And the pattern is becoming increasingly clear.

In fact, I would believe that those of the survivalist mentality (the food, fuel, the gold coins in the coffee can in the back yard) people who think that way will be ultimately vindicated - if George Bush has a second term in office.

People should quit making fun of them because they would be vindicated - even though they were all burned out, twenty-dollared to death, buying books and tapes, and discredited by mainstream media. It may sound like a hollow victory, but it won't be a hollow victory for them - them that's got the Spam...
[link to www.rense.com]

The "collapse" could happen any day from today. The history books will state that it started in 8/2007, but the meat of the chapter will focus on July/Aug/Sept/Oct. 2008. The third week in Sept to Oct. 7 will be extremely interesting.

Are you ready?

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum ... 606836/pg1

[mobes]

HAHA! I would love to see what the Dow Jones Industrial Average does this morning!

[mobes]

Here's the story out of the FP:

Lehman Brothers sunk, Merrill Lynch sold

Eoin Callan in Toronto, Janet Whitman in Lower Manhattan, and Duncan Mavin in Hong Kong, Financial Post  Published: Sunday, September 14, 2008

By the time John Thain emerged under cover of darkness from the Federal Reserve building in New York on Saturday night and climbed into a waiting black SUV it was clear Merrill Lynch & Co.'s chief executive could not count on Wall Street's investment banks to band together to rescue two of their own from being consigned to the history books.

The United States' financial chieftains had arrived at the tower in Lower Manhattan with a mandate to agree to a rescue operation for Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and to moves to protect Merrill from failure after investor confidence in both banks collapsed last week.

The sheer volume of chauffeur-driven limousines required to ferry more than 100 bankers, officials and their advisors to the crisis talks had jammed up traffic around the block.

But inside the building, rivalries and recriminations quickly killed off a proposal from regulators to create a vehicle financed by Wall Street that would buy up the toxic mortgage-backed assets of Lehman and create a potential safety valve for Merrill.

After the dust settled, the finanancial landscape had changed dramatically. Lehman Brothers will file for bankruptcy protection while Mr. Thain's Merrill was forced to turn to the deep-pocketed player that had sat out the talks, Kenneth Lewis, chief executive of Bank of America.

Early Monday, Bank of America, the United States's second-largest bank by asset size, and Merrill came to a deal that valued Merrill at US$29 a share. Merrill shares have lost four-fifths of their value from the peak they reached last year, closing at US$17.05 on Friday. The deal is worth $50 billion, Bank of America said.

For Bank of America, which has been creating scale through a series or record-breaking acquisitions, the deal means it will be able to buy the place it has long coveted in the inner circle of investment firms. The behemoth a transaction would create would likely be one of the dominant institutions on Wall Street and be one of the most significant corporate combinations to emerge from the credit crisis.

The pairing limited the options for Lehman, which said early Monday that it intends to file for bankruptcy protection and consider the sale of some of its operations. The firm faced a darkening outlook as the frantic talks edged toward a deadline of last night. in a bid to ease investor jitters, regulators and bankers wre eager to have a firm plan in place before markets opened in Asia.

A person close to Barclays said the U.K. bank had been considering an outright bid for Lehman, but when the London-headquartered bank balked at a deal late Sunday amid resistance from the U.S. government and its Wall Street peers to backstop the deal with financial support the fate of the 158-year-old U.S. firm appeared to have been sealed. Similarly, a day earlier, Bank of America a had nixed the idea of buying Lehman after U.S. regulators refused to offer any funding to offset the huge risk in taking over such toxic assets.

Regulators were still working towards an orderly unwinding of Lehman, with officials expecting ongoing efforts to sell off of its asset management arm and a carefully negotiated process for liquidating hard-to-value assets that they hoped would avoid 10s of billions of mortgage-related securities flooding the market.

Lehman's demise marks the biggest investment bank implosion since Drexel Burnham Lambert's collapse nearly two decades ago and is likely to lead to heavy job losses among its 25,000-plus staff, some of whom were reportedly leaving the bank's Manhattan offices last night with boxes filled with personal belongings.

The U.S. Security and Exchange Commission said it's taking "actions" to help customers of Lehman Brothers "will not be adversely affected by recent market events." As a result, the broker's customers would have "extensive protections." The Federal Reserve Board is also taking action, expanding the types of collateral banks can use to get loans. It also said it would increase the amount of Treasury securities it auctions on a regular basis to help foster liquid markets.

The moves by Lehman and the deal to rescue Merrill remove two major sources of uncertainty for investors, but the outcome does not remove the doubts about the future of other troubled institutions with portfolios of compromised assets.

American Insurance Group was among the financial stocks hammered by markets last week and the company was expected to unveil an ambitious restructuring this morning in an effort to stave off a further run on its shares.

"The stock market could absolutely disintegrate, but I don't think that's going to happen," said Mike Holland, chairman of investment firm Holland & Co. and a former top executive at Salomon Brothers. "I think there's going to be some relief if the markets to see Lehman go out of business and the world doesn't come to an end. I think people will be relieved that the Lehman thing will be over with one way or another. No one was going to step in and be a hero because there was no reason to be a hero."

Stock futures last night, however, pointed to further turbulence ahead. The Merrill takeover should provide some relief to stock market investors because of the hefty premium Bank of America was expected to offer on top of the bank's share price. Bear Sterns ended up being taken over for less than the value of its stock price, known as a "take under." Lehman faced that prospect, too, before its deal talks broke off.

The surrender of Merrill and Lehman to their fate comes only six months after the government-engineered takeover of Bear Stearns by JP Morgan with US$29-billion of financing from the Fed.

The apparent elimination of three leading investment banks underlines how the credit crisis has reshaped the financial landscape in unforeseen ways.

Unlike with Bear Stearns, this time round the Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who has led the talks with New York Fed President Timothy Geithner, signalled his opposition to using taxpayer funds to help a purchaser take Lehman over.

People familiar with the Treasury's thinking argue government money was not needed because the market has had time to prepare for Lehman's demise. "Treasury and the Fed have determined that markets have adjusted to the situation since Bear Stearns," said Gilbert Schwartz, a partner at Schwartz & Ballen LLP in Washington and a former Fed Board attorney. "If the markets, every time a big institution went bust, expected the government to step in, no one would ever adapt."

Indeed, proposals for a government-backed mega-fund to buy up distressed assets seemed less likely to be adopted in the midst of an election after the resistance that emerged over the weekend to a similar smaller-scale private sector vehicle, which was opposed by Goldman Sachs, according to one person close to the talks.The trigger for the latest round of investor flight has been the dawning realization that key financial institutions had been overly optimistic about the quality of large remaining chunks of their credit exposures.

As the U.S. housing market turned lower and defaults on property loans worked their way up the food chain into mainstream and commercial mortgages, it became clearer that financial institutions had more heavy losses to come on opaque structured products.

This set off share price slides in recent days that have further worsened the troubles of leading financial institutions.

Because these blows to companies' balance sheets come on top of a litany of losses, the looming losses are expected to force them to raise fresh cash so they can continue doing business as normal.

But it is at this point that investor worry has been turning to panic, because of the difficulty they expect financial companies to have raising capital in the current environment.

The resulting dramatic fall in share prices has in turn compelled ratings agencies to step forward and warn of pending cuts to credit scores.

The extreme volatility in share prices is also creating openings for short sellers, who have been betting heavily on worst case scenarios and angling to profit from share price falls.

It was unclear that U.S. authorities had done enough over the weekend to halt this downward spiral. Having convened the marathon three-day talks with the hope of agreeing a deal that would enhance orderly functioning of the markets, regulators instead appeared to be fighting fires and trying to prevent the damage from spreading throughout the banking system.

Financial Post with files from Bloomberg

http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=790942

[Roy Hobs]

I watched the news pretty much all day today.  Waiting to see how all of this financial mess will be spun.  

The consensus amoung the talking heads......................"today was just another acquisition".  

"Happens all the time", they say.

Gold couldn't even break out of the 700's today.  Silver barely broke 10.  It's right now selling for $11.  As I write this, the dollar index is UP -- 78.47.  

Of course everyone on this forum understands that all of this is simply manipulation.  

But guess what?  

The Economy is manipulation.  So all of you fucking retards who keep saying that the Economy is out of there control..............SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!!!!!!!!  

Anyone who claims (as Daryl does constantly) that Gold is going through the roof and we are about to see bread lines -- insinuates that such a thing is beyond the control of the Jewish Cartell.  

That somehow the world economy will spin out of the control of the Jewish Bankers - and the global Jewish crime syndicate.  

I say BULLSHIT.  

Everyone can prove that the Economy is manipulated.  No one can prove that Gold and Silver are "outside" of their control.  

As long as they control the Media, they will control the World Economy for eternity.  They can say whatever they fucking want to.  The Lemmings are buying every word of it.


Next time anyone gets Daryl's ear...........ask him to prove that Gold is outside the control of the Jewish cartell.  Thanks.  

I'd ask him but he never reads my emails and if he does respond, he never responds in detail.  Just says what he wants to say.

It's Ironic.........Daryl recently emailed me to tell me Gold was going to hit 1000 by December.  

Fucker................he did again what I told him not to.

[Rockclimber]

I'm in agreement with you Roy. Unless I can see something that proves otherwise, I have to believe they have the market on gold as well. Even if they do not, they can always pass another gold confiscation act, give you a pittance and buy it back. In one swoop it's back in the pricks hands.

Food, water and items of necessity will be worth more than gold in a pinch. Go fill your storage room full of rice, water, or even toilet paper. These will trade better in a barter system then metal, although I do believe it may not hurt to have some silver if a situation arises where it's needed. Silver is the poor mans gold, it would have served us well had the poor man only bought up the lions share. But it didn't happen, couldn't and will not happen. It's theirs and like every thing else they want it back. Unless millions upon millions organize in these types of situations, we're screwed. So few people own silver and gold that it will be hard to implement as a new currency.

Damn I hate to be so cynical but there you have it.

[mobes]

I watched the news pretty much all day today.  Waiting to see how all of this financial mess will be spun.  

The consensus amoung the talking heads......................"today was just another acquisition".  

"Happens all the time", they say.

Gold couldn't even break out of the 700's today.  Silver barely broke 10.  It's right now selling for $11.  As I write this, the dollar index is UP -- 78.47.  

Of course everyone on this forum understands that all of this is simply manipulation.  

But guess what?  

The Economy is manipulation.  So all of you fucking retards who keep saying that the Economy is out of there control..............SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!!!!!!!!  

Anyone who claims (as Daryl does constantly) that Gold is going through the roof and we are about to see bread lines -- insinuates that such a thing is beyond the control of the Jewish Cartell.  

That somehow the world economy will spin out of the control of the Jewish Bankers - and the global Jewish crime syndicate.  

I say BULLSHIT.  

Everyone can prove that the Economy is manipulated.  No one can prove that Gold and Silver are "outside" of their control.  

As long as they control the Media, they will control the World Economy for eternity.  They can say whatever they fucking want to.  The Lemmings are buying every word of it.


Next time anyone gets Daryl's ear...........ask him to prove that Gold is outside the control of the Jewish cartell.  Thanks.  

I'd ask him but he never reads my emails and if he does respond, he never responds in detail.  Just says what he wants to say.

It's Ironic.........Daryl recently emailed me to tell me Gold was going to hit 1000 by December.  

Fucker................he did again what I told him not to.

Excellent analysis, I completely agree! Roy, would you like to be a guest on my show sometime? I think you and I need to have a convo.

[MikeWB]

How the Masters of the Universe ran amok and cost us the earth



Published Date: 16 September 2008
By Bill Jamieson
SLAM. Slam. Slam. Slam. Like a scene from a gathering of Mafia dons, the doors of 30 black Lincolns slammed shut as their besuited occupants stepped out into a Manhattan downpour – and into a global financial storm.
That storm broke yesterday, with stock markets tumbling around the world. In London, the FTSE 100 plunged almost 4 per cent to 5204.2. Scotland's banking giants were among the biggest victims. HBOS slumped 17.5 per cent; Royal Bank of Scotland lADVERTISEMENT
ost 12.2 per cent. In the US, the Dow Jones industrial average suffered its biggest fall since 9/11.

The collapse effectively began at 6pm last Friday. The place: the offices of the New York Federal Reserve. The occasion: an emergency meeting of the most powerful figures in American banking and finance aimed at staving off a massive bank collapse.

Those who stepped from their limousines to be present included Richard Fuld, the chairman and chief executive of Lehman Brothers; John Mack, the head of Morgan Stanley; Jamie Dimon, of JP Morgan Chase; Vikram Pandit, of Citigroup; Lloyd Blankfein, of Goldman Sachs; Bob Diamond, the head of Barclays Capital; and senior representatives from Mellon Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland.

"We are the biggest overseas bank in America", explained an RBS spokeswoman. "There was an 'all points bulletin' from the Fed and they called us in".

Awaiting them along one side of the boardroom table was the United States Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke – nicknamed Helicopter Ben for having slashed interest rates and showered Wall Street with money earlier this year to avoid the very disaster that was about to unfold.

Flanking him was Hank Paulson, the US treasury secretary, and Tom Geithner, chairman of the New York Fed. It was Geithner who opened the meeting – and presented Wall Street's finest with the fright of their lives.

Either there was a Wall Street rescue for Lehman, or the investment bank would have to face the consequences. An eerie silence ensued.

An analyst at RBS Greenwich in New York summed up the most dramatic meeting of America's top bankers thus: "I thought last weekend was crazy, but this one was even more chaotic.

"Everyone expected to hear by early Sunday evening that the Fed/Treasury had managed to arrange a shotgun wedding for Lehman with someone – Bank of America, Barclays, private equity. A funny thing happened on the way to a deal.

"The New York Fed called in all of the head honchos and said that they had a great deal for them. One lucky participant would get to buy Lehman's business and their 'good' assets for a bargain price.

"The others would get a consolation prize: a chance to contribute their own precious capital to fund a bank of Lehman's 'bad' assets. The Fed and Treasury were said to be 'adamant' that public money would not be involved in any bail-out.

"No government money? OK, no deal."

The meeting set the tone for the weekend. By Saturday morning, more than 100 bankers were involved. Paulson refused to budge on pleas for government underpinning of the Lehman "bad bank" proposal: $41.8 billion (£23.3 billion) of property and up to a further $40 billion of "toxic" assets that had been infected by subprime mortgage loans or derivatives.

Cookies and coffee arrived. Then ghoulish crowds began to gather, reminiscent of those that had assembled in Wall Street 80 years ago as the stock market crashed.

The last of the meetings broke up late on Sunday, by which time there were no fewer than three separate frenzied huddles of investment bankers. One comprised credit traders trying to agree an orderly unwinding of Lehman's default swaps to avoid utter mayhem yesterday morning.

Another room was full of regulators trying to put a floor under AIG, the world's biggest insurer, whose shares had crashed the previous week.

The third was putting together a massive $50 billion rescue takeover by Bank of America of Merrill Lynch – the investment bank to broking giant that is famous for its "raging bull" logo.

The United States is now in the throes of its biggest banking crisis in 70 years, stirring terrible memories of panics, bank failures, bankruptcies and mass unemployment. First Bear Stearns had to be rescued. Then the government had to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two largest US mortgage providers. Now Lehman Brothers.

Dick Fuld, who threatened to break the legs of any partner caught shorting Lehman stock – gambling on the value of shares falling – is now just another name on a lengthening list of the "Masters of the Universe", a phrase made famous by Tom Wolfe in his 1987 novel of Wall Street ambition and greed, The Bonfire of the Vanities, who have crashed to earth.

AND as Fuld crashed, his personal shareholding in the bank tumbled by more than $500 million. The list of the investment banking world's fallen giants already reads like a Who's Who of money: Charles "Chuck" Prince, the chief executive of Citigroup; Jimmy Cayne, the chief executive of Bear Stearns (RIP); Peter Wuffli, the UBS chief executive, and Marc Ospel, its chairman.

How has it come to this? What caused America's fourth-largest investment bank to crash and file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy? It is unctuously described by some as a "venerable, 158 year-old" institution. In truth, there is nothing particularly venerable about Lehman Brothers – and its elevation to "greatness" is recent.

It began in 1844 as a small shop in Montgomery, Alabama. It developed as an investment company, had a rocky ride in the 1970s, and in the early 1980s was bought by American Express, which sold it in 1993, when Fuld became chief executive.

Lehman floated on the stock market as a minnow boutique bank, with earnings of only $75 million.

But Fuld, a Lehman lifer, was already getting used to life in the "bulge bracket" (a group of investment banks considered the world's most powerful).

Before he took up the top post at Lehman, he found himself in a Las Vegas casino when a bad gambler blew $4 million. The gambler was following a classic strategy: when the cards go against you, double up the bet, because eventually things are sure to turn your way. Fuld took notes on a cocktail napkin as the gambler imploded, reaching the conclusion that bad luck can always continue longer than seems reasonable. "I don't care who you are," he wrote later. "You don't have enough capital."

How prophetic that was to prove.

From 2004, Fuld's fortunes were transformed as Lehman's profits surged. The bank rode what an earlier generation would have seen as a convergence of utter improbables: a wave of deregulation, typified by the scrapping of the Glass-Steagall Act (which kept retail and investment banks separate); low interest rates; and a wave of financial innovation that turned the most toxic loans into fancy credit products.

Sky-high bonuses and share-option packages poured fuel on this fiery concoction.

Lehman embarked on massively leveraged property acquisitions and expansion. Equity trading soared. And the bank plunged heavily into subprime lending. Indeed, just ahead of the market collapse, Lehman underwrote more mortgage-backed securities than any other firm.

IT built up a staggering $88 billion portfolio, 44 per cent more than Morgan Stanley and four times the $22.5 billion of shareholder equity the bank had as a buffer against losses.

But losses? What were they? Mortgage lending had a low default record. And the bank was on a roll, creating ever more ingenious financial products that bonus-driven salesmen sold to bedazzled clients. The group posted record profits, the shares soared towards $70 and bonuses and stock options gushed forth.

Fuld joined the bulge bracket. He was paid $34.5 million in 2005, comprising a base salary of $750,000, a $13.8 million cash bonus, and stock and options worth $19.94 million.

So how does his demise compare with the other fallen idols who have now fled the crashing debris in Wall Street? They may have driven their banks – and their shareholders – into enormous losses. But the former Masters of the Universe will never know what it's like to live in a subprime home.

By the end, 62-year-old Fuld was Lehman's biggest individual stockholder. Despite the crash, he stands to leave with about $65 million, based on Lehman's Friday morning stock price of $3.73. This tally includes 8.6 million unrestricted shares worth some $32.1 million as of Friday morning – though they had been worth $582 million last November before the credit crunch hurricane struck.

Chuck ("I'm still dancing") Prince left Citigroup with a package said to be worth $40 million. He also received a pension of $1.74 million and another one million stock options – worthless at the time of his departure. Merrill Lynch's Stan O'Neal spent much of last summer perfecting his golf swing, confident that his trusty lieutenants at Merrill could avoid those subprime bunkers. It turned out to be a bad call.

HE WAS ousted last October as the first waves of the credit crunch struck, with a retirement package reckoned at more than $160 million.

Jimmy Cayne, 15 years at the top of Bear Stearns, was said to be on the golf course in June 2006 just as the bank dropped the first of many clangers, with a 10 per cent dive in profits. Worse followed, with the bank having to put up $3.2 billion to try to rescue its imploding hedge fund.

By mid-March last year, when the bank collapsed, Cayne, who would rush from Wall Street by chopper to the private Hollywood Golf Club in New Jersey to play 18 holes before dark, had already relinquished the reins, handing over the chief executive's role to Alan Schwartz.

When Schwartz went cap in hand to the New York Fed for a $30 billion bail-out, Cayne was said to be competing in the North American Bridge Championship in Detroit.

Cayne and his wife, Patricia, sold all their 5.6 million shares in Bear Stearns – worth as much as $1.2 billion in January 2007 – for $61.3 million at the end of March this year. The couple recently bought two adjacent apartments in New York's plush Plaza building for $28.2 million.

He left with a $30 million "golden goodbye" – enough to do up his Park Avenue property and a mock Tudor mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. But it emerged that the mansion, set in 2.3 acres of land, was surplus to requirements. "It no longer meets his needs,'' said the local estate agent, trying to sell it for $6.15 million. He was forced to cut the asking price.

That's how tough it gets at the top in Wall Street.

Scots bank giants shudder as shockwaves cross Atlantic

SHARES in global businesses plunged and analysts warned of a prolonged recession yesterday after leading investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy.

The move prompted Merrill Lynch, another of the top four US investment houses, to agree a £28 billion takeover bid from the Bank of America.

And it came after insurer American International Group approached the Federal Reserve for £22 billion of short-term financing.

The misery spurred the Bank of England to pump an extra £5 billion into the markets to improve liquidity for frightened banks, and the Fed to accept stocks in exchange for cash loans for the first time.

And MPs on the Treasury select committee said the Bank of England should be given greater powers to call for failing banks to be nationalised in the wake of Northern Rock.

Analysts warned the "whole of the international financial system" was at risk and, if it recovered, would be ensnared by far tighter regulation than in the past.

The FTSE finished 4 per cent lower, the Dow Jones plunged by almost 4 per cent, or 500 points, and shares dropped across the board.

Edinburgh-based banking giants RBS and HBOS were among the worst-hit firms. HBOS reached a yearly low when its stocks almost halved in value at one point in trading. They later rallied to end with a 17.55 per cent drop.

Lehman, a 158-year-old company with about 25,000 staff worldwide, including about 5,000 in the UK, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US, which puts its operations under the ward of the courts.

Its share price tumbled 90 per cent last week after it reported a £2.2 billion loss precipitated by a £3.9 billion "hit" from commercial property and subprime mortgage losses.

The collapse came after Barclays Bank pulled out of a buy-out deal, reportedly because the US government had refused to issue guarantees.

The government's refusal to get involved is seen by analysts as a turning point following the use of public money in high-profile bail-outs of failing organisations including Bear Sterns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Ten of the world's biggest banks committed to establish a £39 billion borrowing facility to bolster global liquidity.

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said the situation was "very grave". He said there would be intervention to stop banks failing because the "whole of the international financial system" was at risk.

"I think the least we are going to have to learn from this is that the whole of the financial sector simply cannot return to where it was before. It is going to have to be much more tightly regulated in the public interest."

When the markets opened in the wake of the collapse, UK banks were worst hit.

However, Angela Knight, chief executive of the British Bankers' Association, said "no UK bank was in a similar position to Lehman", which does not take retail deposits.

A spokesman for Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, said the Treasury, Bank of England and Financial Services Authority were in "very close contact" with their US counterparts.

The funds released by the Bank were almost five times oversubscribed by banks. The European Central Bank also made undisclosed funds available to financial institutions. But the Fed refused to step in with direct assistance.

Professor William Perraudin, of Imperial College Business School in London, said banks would again become suspicious of lending to each other, leading to another plunge in the already fragile property market.

In the UK, administrators PWC said Lehman Brothers, the principal UK trading company in the Lehman group, was one of four firms in administration.

Refugees of financial storm flee with golf clubs and fine wines

CLUTCHING golf clubs, branded umbrellas and what appeared to be a box of fine Languedoc wines among other office knick-knacks, bewildered ex-employees yesterday streamed out of the Lehman Brothers' European headquarters at Canary Wharf in London.

Of the collapsed US investment bank's 4,500 UK-based staff, about 24 were made redundant immediately, with the majority due to find out where they stand today or tomorrow.

Staff were sent e-mails telling them the bank was filing for bankruptcy and to report for work at 7am.

Watched by a row of security guards, those who turned up were handed a printed sheet warning them not to engage in any financial transactions.

Tony Lomas, a lead administrator for PricewaterhouseCoopers, which took over the financial firm after it filed for bankruptcy protection yesterday morning, said the "extraordinarily complex" company could take six years to wind up and he was uncertain whether they would be able to pay the £42 million monthly wage bill this Friday.

After staff were given the choice simply to go home yesterday, some of them cried. Others were on the phone to headhunters and recruitment agencies. Elsewhere in the building, employees tried to use up credit on their canteen cards and others consoled themselves with a drink in the company canteen. Many spent the morning clearing their desks and swapping contact details.

Edouard d'Archimbaud, 24, from Paris, arrived in Canary Wharf for his first day of work but did not even make it as far as his desk. Mr d'Archimbaud, who was due to start a £45,000-a-year job as a trader, said he was told on arrival that everybody had lost their jobs. He said: " I've taken out a six-month lease on a flat and I don't know how I will pay for it."

Graduate trainee Jack Reynolds, with the company for only a week, said: "My career has been halted at the first hurdle."

Kirsty McCluskey, 32, who worked on the trading floor, said: "It is terrible. Death. It's like a massive earthquake. It's final. Everybody is just finishing up."

One banker, who is expecting twins, was among the staff laid off. Marion Guilbert, 36, said: "I have been there for seven years. It's even more emotional for a pregnant woman, but you have to take the positives out of it."

[MikeWB]

Asia's crashing folks. We might have a Black Tuesday

You can see the indexes here: http://finance.yahoo.com/intlindices?e=asia  It's a bloodbath.

[Roy Hobs]

"..........It's a bloodbath..........."


I guess not enough of a "bloodbath".

I'm writing this at 11:30 pm eastern standard time.

Here are the Metals --

Gold -- trading DOWN $7.15 to $776.00 per ounce.

Silver -- trading DOWN .34 cents to 10.77.

Dollar Index -- trading UP .41 to 78.75.

This is all about "wealth transfer".  That's it.  

Judicial Inc is suspect in my opinion, BUT...........they have a perspective on all of this that I think is worth taking a look at.  

Funny......................No one in the mainstream media (or hardly in the truth movement) ever talks about where has all the money gone???  

Everyone talks about all the trillions lost etc., etc., but no one ever mentions that someone had to acquire that money.  Money just doesn't disappear.  

Trillions of dollars are in the hands of the Jewish Cartell.  They will buy more and more hard assets everntually owning all the world's resources.  Meanwhile............we are chasing bulls and bears and waiting for the Gold to "go through the roof!"

[Rockclimber]

The Patriot Trading Group guys break it down very well. This was recorded around noon Arizona time.

http://allamericangold.com/ptg15sept08.mp3


There saying count on Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley going the way of Bear Stearns and Lehman. Lehman btw, they state will be a about 1-trillion dollar bankruptcy.

You haven't seen anything yet.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Funny that these Money Changers grew so big and fast on the idea of "little government oversight" but now in their blow up phase they plead for a bailout.  Looks like the final scam known as the Federal Reserve System will hopefully be considered an economic "evil" after a lot of institutions go under.  Logically, as long as the Federal Reserve distributes money to financial centers (headed by a lot of corrupt Jews), a trader doesn't have to be all that "smart" as long as the larger Goyim believes in their ability.  This might start the repudiation of Jewish-Talmudic (Modern) finance.