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Re Bear Sterns, there were lots of political reasons it was allowed to fail while others were protected. If I remember right something about them not helping with the Long Term Capital Management collapse for example. There will have been people who had the opportunity to help SVB and collectively decided it was better to let it fail. It will be interesting to understand the decisions that were made when the dust settles


Bear Stearns was the first shoe to drop. Intervening would have spooked the market. Later implosions were addressed because there was no alternative.

Unless you experienced that time, it really hard to understand the pervasive denial of what was obviously happening.

You'll see the same thing happen this time around, and will have an equally hard time conveying just how strong the denial was.


When and where does the next shoe drop this time then?


It's possible we haven't seen the first shoe yet, and bank failures like this one are just the canaries dropping dead.

To speculate about where that first shoe might be in this case and who's wearing it, it might help to consider where the buck ultimately stops.


They did intervene with Bear. The JPM acquisition came with all sorts of backstops and guarantees from the Fed. Lehman was the one where they didn't intervene, which is why there was no acquisition.


great callback. revenge on Jimmy Cayne for when genius failed.

Dont forget it was Lehman that failed first, Bear got special treatment amongst the Citi, AIG, et al bailouts.


Bear was sold at a %90 discount (so not a complete loss) 1 week before Lehman failed.


I was surprised when it was supposed to sell for $2 but then they raised it to $10 for some reason even though it was a zombie bank.


This is simply not true.




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