Bear wasn’t sold for $2/share. JP Morgan Chase offered $2/share. Bear still have an chance to reject this offer or negotiate. There might even be a different offer all together. The point is that this deal is not closed and the market treat it that way. Why do you think BSC closed today at $4.81 when JP offered $2? The lowest it went today was $2.84, still well over the $2 offered.

I don’t like bail out just like the next guy, especially when it’s more the big wigs. However, like golfgal point out, you also have to consider what would have happened if the were no bail out and FED defended the dollar and raised rates instead of lowering it the last several months. The worse case would be major bank failure/bankruptcy. Which will make it nearly impossible to get a mortgage. Since rates would be higher, all the sub-prime and most of the alt-A will go into foreclosure. This would hemorrhage from top to bottom. Sure, the saver might think they’re insulated now, but what would happened if all of this cause a depression and most of us lost our jobs for 2-4 years. Do you have enough cash to survive that long? If so, would you have extra $ to take advantage of the hard crash? Just trying to play devil’s advocate, but there’s no silver bullet. We have to pick the lesser of the 2 evils, and I have to assume that all those people running the FED are smarter than all of us on this board, or else, God help us all.