bear stearns

With the failures of Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac this month, reams of Wall Street executives are out of work or soon will be.

But how much did the CEOs get in compensation last year? How about $38 million for Bear Stearns' CEO? $34 million for Lehman's CEO?

$14 million for AIG's CEO? The list goes on. Outrageous. (Slideshow)

Bear Stearns got one. Lehman Brothers didn't. Life can seem unfair in the world of government bailouts. But decisions about who gets help from the government are based on circumstances and pressure generated by the political or financial crisis of the moment.

SO, ladies and gentlemen, how does it feel to be the new owner of those two big and banged-up mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?

Not exactly the kind of real estate you were looking to buy, you say? Felt you had swallowed enough garbage after the Bear Stearns bailout …

In scenes eerily familiar of the final days of Bear Stearns, employees at Lehman Brothers are watching the value of their stock evaporate and their job prospects dim.

White Knight?

Here's a link to listen to an Audio Version of the report:

The story of the day on Friday was that a white knight in the form of Korea’s Development Bank was going to ride in and rescue Lehman Bros.

(LEH). The thinking here is if a Lehman bailout is successful, then there would be one less shoe to potentially drop in the credit crisis.

Do Washington policymakers listen too much to Wall Street? A possible bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, on the heels of similar action involving investment firm Bear Stearns, seems to send a loud signal to financial companies that the government will clean up their messes.

Suspicion over the collapse of Bear Stearns is centring on a massive options trade, less than two weeks before the historic investment bank went under in March, by which a single investor made a profit of more than $270m (£141m) on a bet against the company's share price.

Alan Schwartz, the Bear Stearns chief executive who was forced to sell the investment bank to JPMorgan Chase & Co., will leave the banking company at the end of the summer, according to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday.

THEY rarely ring a bell at the bottom of bear markets. Investors who thought they had heard a tinkling sound when Bear Stearns, a failing American investment bank, was bundled into JPMorgan Chase in March have been disappointed.

The Federal Reserve was scrambling to prevent a "contagion" from infecting the nation's financial system when it took unprecedented actions to back a Bear Stearns rescue package and provide emergency loans to ...