The scramble to find a buyer for Lehman Brothers hit panic mode heading into the weekend.What we were posting:
Lehman shares dropped another 14% and the finished the week down 77% as the endgame for the struggling investment bank neared. A rush of bearish investors stepped up their bets against Lehman throughout the week, a development that only accelerated the stock’s rapid plunge.
On Friday night, the New York Fed held an emergency meeting with top Wall Street executives to discuss Lehman’s future and the state of the U.S. economy. The roster of attendees was filled with prominent names such as Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack and Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain.
The meeting drew comparisons to what transpired a decade earlier when top Wall Street executives gathered to prevent hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management from collapsing. The government had already intervened in Bear Stearns and authorized a takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Talks regarding Lehman would continue through the weekend. As of Friday, Mr. Paulson wasn’t willing to support a government-led bailout, a stance that he would stick to.
On the Street
The Dow Jones Industrial Average erased an early 150-point decline and finished the day down just 11.71 points....MORE
4:27a.m.
Wilbur Ross Tries India
4:29a.m.
Venezuela's Chavez Insults US, Expels Ambassador
5:46a.m.
Hedge Fund Glory Days Fading Fast
5:54a.m.
The Real Reason Commodities Are Tumbling.
10:23a.m.
Hurricane Watch: Galveston, Gasoline and Greed
Hurricane Ike is closing in on Texas, and stands poised to become one of the most damaging hurricanes of all time....10:57a.m.
Could I Have 10,000 Soybeans, Please?
12:18p.m.
Cramer Loves First Solar, Climateer says "Book 'em Dano"
...I want to make plain that Climateer Investing was not intended to be a trading tips blog but:1:44p.m.
a) In this market it is one of the few things that seems to be working. You have to be nimble, it is a bear market, that means the trend will tend to be down.
b) It's something I've been doing for a while. At minimum, I'll try to steer you clear of bankruptcies, frauds and other really bad things.
c) 7 1/2 percent isn't huge but "He who fights and runs away...
How to Make Money in Difficult Times
...This environment is good news for a trader with the agility of Spider-Man and the mathematical chops of Steven Hawking, but for everyone else, it can be frustrating. “When you have such volatility it’s a great environment for traders, assuming you’re smart enough to be on the right side of a trade, but it’s much harder for everyone else”2:44p.m.
Hurricane Watch: Tiny Texans Airlifted Ahead of Ike
At Galveston's airport this afternoon, dozens of helicopter and airplane crew members were waiting to evacuate sick and premature babies who couldn't travel by bus or ambulance from the University of Texas Medical Branch...
...Intensive care ambulances that had picked up the fragile infants at UTMB rolled onto the airport apron and handed the babies off to crews who staff airborne intensive care units....
...Premature babies who were brought to the airport in car seats by ambulance were "feeder-growers," Taggart said.
"They're just kind of fattening up, just waiting to get big enough to go home," she said as she moved away from a revving jet ambulance....2:59p.m.
In Tough Times, Even the Billionaires Worry
9:27p.m.
Hurricane Watch: Black Panthers standing guard at some gas stations
10:45p.m.
Hurricane Watch: Contact Information- - Houston Area Red Cross; Salvation Army, Greater Houston Command
The Wilbur Ross note is interesting in that he had been saying oil was a bubble, by definition caused by speculation, and he wanted to make the most leveraged bet on price declines he could find.
He bought a decrepit Indian airline.
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