Top Items:
New York Times:
JPMorgan Acts to Buy Ailing Bear Stearns at Huge Discount — Bear Stearns, facing collapse because of the mortgage crisis, agreed Sunday evening to be bought by JPMorgan Chase for a bargain-basement price of less than $250 million, the two companies announced.
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Wall Street Journal:
Bear Stearns Closes in on Deal To Sell Itself to J.P. Morgan — Bear Stearns Cos. was closing in on a deal Sunday afternoon to sell itself to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., as worries deepened that the financial crisis of confidence could spread if Bear failed to find a buyer by Monday morning.
Matthew Yglesias:
Sunday Financial Meltdown Blogging — Every now and again, and then increasingly as things start looking worse, I get a comment like “how can you write about [thing that's not earth-shatteringly important] when the economy is [something terrible happening in the economy].”
Discussion:
Brendan Nyhan
Edmund L. Andrews / New York Times:
Fed Acts to Rescue Financial Markets — WASHINGTON — Hoping to avoid a systemic meltdown in financial markets, the Federal Reserve on Sunday approved a $30 billion credit line to engineer the takeover of Bear Stearns and announced an open-ended lending program for the biggest investment firms on Wall Street.
Paul Krugman / New York Times:
The B Word — O.K., here it comes: The unthinkable is about to become the inevitable. — Last week, Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary, and John Lipsky, a top official at the International Monetary Fund, both suggested that public funds might be needed to rescue the U.S. financial system.
Scott Lanman / Bloomberg:
U.S. Fed Cuts Discount Rate, Says Dealers May Borrow — The Federal Reserve, in an emergency weekend decision, cut the rate on direct loans to commercial banks and opened up borrowing at the rate to primary dealers in government securities. — In an announcement before the start of trading …
Megan McArdle:
Sold! — So JP Morgan has agreed to buy Bear Stearns at $2 a share. As others have already pointed out, this is, from the point of view of the shareholders, just barely better than bankruptcy. Talk of a bailout of the bank is silly—this wasn't a bailout; it was an orderly winding-up of business.
Andrew Ross Sorkin / New York Times:
JP Morgan Pays $2 a Share for Bear Stearns
JP Morgan Pays $2 a Share for Bear Stearns
Discussion:
Washington Monthly
Ronald Kessler / NewsMax.com:
Washington Insider with Ronald Kessler — Obama Attended Hate America Sermon — Contrary to Senator Barack Obama's claim that he never heard his pastor Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. preach hatred of America, Obama was in the pews last July 22 when the minister blamed the “white arrogance” …
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Tom Maguire / JustOneMinute:
Oprah, Obama, And Wright — It has been reported that Oprah Winfrey, who endorsed Obama, is the other famous member of Wright's now controversial church. However, she seems to have moved away from that church quite some time ago - this is from 2002: … I wonder what Oprah would say about the direction Wright's ministry took.
Michelle Gallardo / WLS-TV:
Obama answers questions about Rezko, pastor — No campaign stops were scheduled Sunday for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. He was in the Chicago area Saturday night for a fundraiser. — The Illinois senator was in an Indianapolis suburb also this weekend, where he …
Discussion:
EconoPundit
LATimes / Top of the Ticket:
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright was an early concern, Obama aide admits
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright was an early concern, Obama aide admits
Discussion:
Telegraph, Political Byline, Taylor Marsh, FREEDOM EDEN, TalkLeft, Bang the Drum and Winds of Change.NET
New Jersey Online:
McGreevey aide says he had sexual trysts with ex-governor, wife — A former aide to James E. McGreevey said today that he had three-way sexual trysts with the former governor and his wife before he took office, challenging Dina Matos McGreevey's assertion that she was naive about her husband's sexual exploits.
Discussion:
Gawker, New York Post, Gateway Pundit, Gothamist, JunkYardBlog, Pam's House Blend, Political Byline and The Other McCain
Alan Greenspan / Financial Times:
We will never have a perfect model of risk — The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the second world war. It will end eventually when home prices stabilise and with them the value of equity in homes supporting troubled mortgage securities.
Kate Zernike / New York Times:
Postfeminism and Other Fairy Tales — PERHAPS it was the “Iron my shirt!” hecklers. Or maybe it was Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the object of those hecklers, having to defend her likability. Or the resonance of her proxy, Amy Poehler, being shut out in the “Saturday Night Live” spoofs of the Democratic debates.
Scott Horton / Harper's:
The Gathering Storm at Justice — I don't in the ordinary course review and recommend law review articles, but I've just come across one that is close to indispensable for public affairs junkies. On December 7, 2006—the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor—at least eight U.S. attorneys …
Think Progress:
One Year Later, Market Where McCain Strolled ‘Freely’ Is Controlled By Sadr, Too Unsafe For Americans To Visit — On April 1, 2007, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) strolled through the open-air Shorja market in Baghdad in an effort to prove that Americans are “not getting the full picture” of what's going on in Iraq.
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