Buy a skyscraper (get a free investment bank)

17th March 2008

Ouch. Bear Stearns was sold for c.$250m, whilst the building they are in is worth well over $1bn. I don’t normally write about economics, but this is starting to look enormous.

There are lots of blog comments that there’s more of this to come.

So I am invoking the sentiment of that brilliant philosopher Yogi Berra: It ain’t over ’til its over. And believe me, my friends, it ain’t nowhere near over.

Blogger Mark Anderson writes why he recently predicted just a quarter point reduction in interest rates:

Why did I make that bet? Theyâ€™re running out of room, while the crisis has a way to go. They donâ€™t dare spend all their powder on one big rate shot. Rather, Bernanke is looking for other ways (including his $200B fund of last week) to avoid deeper problems.

I told the group, in response to a question asked at the end, that, although not technically in a recession, the US was in fact in recession, and had been for awhile.

And on top of this, this is still the best primer I have seen on banking’s current woes.