unmanaged wrote:

In one of the most dramatic days in Wall Street’s history, Merrill Lynch agreed to sell itself to Bank of America for roughly $50 billion to avert a deepening financial crisis, while another prominent securities firm, Lehman Brothers, hurtled toward liquidation after it failed to find a buyer, people briefed on the deals said.

The humbling moves, which reshape the landscape of American finance, mark the latest chapter in a tumultuous year in which once-proud financial institutions have been brought to their knees as a result of tens of billions of dollars in losses because of bad mortgage finance and real estate investments.

They culminated a weekend of frantic around-the-clock negotiations, as Wall Street bankers huddled in meetings at the behest of Bush administration officials to try to avoid a downward spiral in the markets stemming from a crisis of confidence.

“My goodness. I’ve been in the business 35 years, and these are the most extraordinary events I‘ve ever seen,” said Peter G. Peterson, co-founder of the private equity firm the Blackstone Group, who was head of Lehman in the 1970s and a secretary of commerce in the Nixon administration.

Govt says everything is ok, but who do we really believe anymore... bad days are on the way.

The name Bush is about to go down in history the same way the name Hoover did. If you said Hoover in my grandmother's house, it didn't matter if you were talking about vacuum cleaners, you could expect at the very least to be wondering if you'd still be able to walk after she got done chewing your ass off, and that's assuming she didn't just throw you out of the house. It didn't matter if you were one of her 10 year old grandchildren or not.

When Greenspan says once in a half century, more likely once in a century, we're talking about 1929. Batten down the hatches, this is going to get incredibly rocky.

RE: In Frantic Day, Wall Street Banks Teeter