February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Due to a clearly bad business model a lot of jobs are being lost at Bear Stearns and this is an absolute tragedy for many families.
At the same time, the alacrity in Washington that has greeted the mess at Bear Stearns would not require so much comment or study if it were somehow an example of governmental consistency.
But it stands in stark contrast to the snail’s pace that has greeted other events and urgent situations in recent times.
If only Bear Stearns was headquartered in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. But it isn’t. It’s actually not even on Wall Street but in midtown Manhattan just yards from where the St. Patrick’s Day Parade made its progress up Fifth Avenue on Monday.
Indeed, the Wall Street Journal suggested that the pipes in the parade were providing something of a funereal backdrop for a company that has been around for a great many parades, but will not now see the next one in its long familiar form.
With regard to the federal intervention, it’s difficult not to wrinkle your nose a bit at the sight of what many believe is a naked exercise in corporate welfare.
And it’s hard not to be amazed at how what the New York Times described as a “venerable” financial institution managed to walk itself into such a catastrophe.
Despite al its apparent advantages, Bear Stearns seems to be in much the same poor shape as so many American families – only on a scale that, we were told, threatened to bring down the nation’s entire banking system.
Meanwhile, how many of those same American individuals and families must find themselves doing a Bear Stearns before the cavalry rides, literally overnight, to the rescue?
Congress and the Bush administration are kicking around a rescue package but for many it will be too little too late.
Meanwhile, we can only wish Bear Stearns, and all who manage to hang on to jobs there, a return to better days.
But that big rescue package should be paid back on time lest we taxpayers are forced to come up with one of those late fees that “venerable” financial institutions unleash with such speed on hard pressed citizens each and every day.