Bringing Down Bear Stearns: Politics & Power
On Monday, March 10, the rumor started: Bear Stearns was having liquidity problems. In fact, the maverick investment bank had around $18 billion in cash reserves. But soon the speculation created its own reality, and the race was on to keep Bear's crisis from ravaging Wall Street. With the blow-by-blow from insiders, Bryan Burrough follows the players--Bear's stunned executives, trigger-happy reporters at CNBC, a nervous Fed, a shadowy group of short-sellers--in what some believe was the greatest financial scandal in history.
...around 11...Bear's stock began to fall. It was then, questioning his trading desks downstairs, that Molinaro first heard the rumor: Bear was having liquidity troubles, Wall Street's way of saying the firm was running out of money. Molinaro made a face. This was crazy. There was no liquidity problem. Bear had about $18 billion in cash reserves.
Yet the whiff of gossip Molinaro heard that morning was the first tiny ripple in what within hours ...
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