bear stearns

Just Like Tom Wolfe's Blues

In Tom Wolfe's 1998 novel A Man In Full, big-time real estate developer Charlie Croker becomes a religious evangelical as his once-vast wealth dissolves. The same thing seems to be happening to Bear Stearns chairman and former CEO James Cayne, who played golf and bridge and maybe smoked pot as his firm crumbled, and whose horde of Stearns shares is now worth maybe one-twentieth its value a year ago. Cayne is selling all those shares. Like Croker, he considers such worldly possessions baggage and, to hear the Times tell it, is on the verge of some kind of spiritual awakening: More »

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Stoner Executive Helps Destroy Your Economy

This morning, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan is warning of the worst financial crisis since World War II, the Wall Street Journal is reporting on its front page that "Banks Fear a Deepening of Turmoil," Asian stocks plunged and the federal government is financing the purchase by JP Morgan Chase of fast-collapsing investment bank Bear Stearns for less than a tenth of its stock market capitalization and about one-quarter of the value of its headquarters building. The biggest story for the moment, and the biggest single cause the current wave of fear, is the near bankruptcy of Stearns this weekend after its trading partners started asking for money owed, its credit ratings got cut and banks stopped lending the company money against even top-quality mortgage bonds. Where was the Bear Stearns' Chairman, James Cayne amid all this? Playing bridge in a tournament, a source told the Journal, until he finally returned to New York Saturday, two days after lenders starting reining in the company's credit. This is the same James Cayne embarrassed in the Times in July for playing golf amid another Stearns near-meltdown and downright humiliated in the Journal just this past November, after another time he played bridge during a company crisis, and also allegedly smoked pot: More »