Monetary System

With blood on the street and one flagging financial institution after another gasping for dear life, a quote from the Movie "Wall Street" bears remembering: In the last seven deals that I've been involved with, there were 2.5 million…

It has now been confirmed that Bank of America has bought Merrill Lynch for $44 billion. Originally, Bank of America had been in the running to buy Lehman Brothers but balked at Lehman's black hole of a balance sheet. The U.S. Government…

Update: 810 PM EDT: Rush Is On to Prevent A.I.G. From Failing Update: 1045 PM EDT: A.I.G. Seeks $40 Billion in Fed Aid to Survive Update: 810 AM EDT: See my post on what to expect this morning in the market and my (cursory) analysis of the…

Update: 800PM EDT: DealBook is now reporting that Lehman is expected to file bankruptcy as soon as tonight. (See post). Merrill, fearing for its continued existence, is now in takeover talks with BofA (see…

The world of financial services in not looking terribly stable in the wake of the Frannie nationalization. In fact, things are as jumbled as they have ever been. The latest news has AIG down 30% and both WaMu and Lehman brothers on the…

The word on the street is that Lehman will be bought by September 13th. The rumor mill swirls when a stock crashes like Lehman has. Rumors fill the vacuum left by a lack of certainty about a company's prospects. And right now people are…

I have only seen this story in Germany so far. The long and short is that this is a done deal. Deutsche Bank is expected to close the deal tomorrow. Helping to seal the deal is the fact that no layoffs are anticipated initially. This will…

Below are the latest writedown stories from the web that I have seen. Quite honestly, I have been a little behind in updating all of the stories on the timeline, so please call me out on anything important I failed to add.For the full…

RAB Capital, the hedge fund that lost a good deal of capital in its quest to capitalize on the Northern Rock situation now finds itself losing investor money. In fact, it is looking to halt redemptions from its funds for three years. This…

Lehman Brothers released their earnings report this morning at 7:30 AM. Lehman saw a Q3 loss of $5.92 a share, or $3.9 billion. There was a lot of speculation in the markets yesterday about Lehman's liquidity after talks for an investment…