Favorite commentary on JP Morgan and Bear Stearns

Heard on the teevee, in passing: “The Yankees paid more for Alex Rodgriguez than Morgan paid for Bear Stearns.”
Today Bear’s shares are trading for more than Morgan’s offer—the debt holders must want some bargaining power… (from Felix Salmon)

They are worried about a ‘liquidity trap’

Economics Blog : Fed Invokes Depression-Era Law for Bear Loan
Key sentence:
Officials said while the loan is being made via J.P. Morgan Chase, the risk is being borne by the Fed. That means if Bear Stearns fails and the collateral is insufficient to repay the loan, the Fed would incur a loss.

This only makes sense [...]

Why it is hard to detect people shooting for the ‘Black Swan’

Here, the ‘Black Swan’ will kill the fund. With probability one, for a long enough horizon.
If you were betting on the ‘Black Swan’ by doing the opposite, you would bleed capital for a long time.
Econbrowser: Hedge fund risk

We went through a Flat Stanley phase at home

and LAist: Flat Stanley Does Hollywood is pretty neat.

The father of Pinyin

Video: Helping China learn to read | World news | guardian.co.uk

End times

are now pretty close for aged relative. It is happening at my house, and the emergency room. I am not sure how L. is going to react: tonight was pretty rough, as aged relative is now mumbling about how death is coming, how she wants it to come, and how life was meaningless.
I [...]

Damn

The Canadian Press: Despite long battle with cancer, Jeff Healey’s death still shocking, bandmate

I don’t trust the bubble narrative:

What the heck knows what the ‘real’ value of an asset should be? Even the basic simple models in the textbooks are tough to take to data.
So I agree with the linked piece:
Emanuel Derman’s Blog: Bubbles

I fell into a burning ring of fire…

Ring of fire video