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Scenes from Bear Stearns headquarters - "Their computer screens are dark, and their chairs are empty. A few try to work but seem absurd for doing so..."
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This Link is located in the Public Channel Housing Bubble and Bear Links.
Posted by ian 1 year 244 days ago (slate.com). Views: 38
Tags: bear stearns housing bubble credit crisis |
| Related Tags: economics stock market banks wall street gold peter schiff inflation |
All around the cafeteria, people gather at tables and speak in hushed tones about what has happened. We take a table and join in the huddled whispering.
"This was the best deal?" asks Our Host, in disbelief, of Bear's sale to JPMorgan. "Because if this is our fate, I can't think of any worse scenario. Some people are saying bankruptcy would have provided more value down the road."
The cafeteria has a deflated feel, like a resort at the end of high season in advance of a hurricane. Our Host looks across the thin room and into the windows of JPMorgan's 270 Park Ave. headquarters, just across the way.
Their computer screens are dark, and their chairs are empty. A lot people are already out interviewing for new jobs. Others have opted to stay home in the comfort of their own sofas. A few try to work but seem absurd for doing so, like the Japanese soldiers they found on those islands in the '60s, still fighting the war in the Pacific.
"You see how people are standing and talking?" says Our Host. "That means they're not working. Generally, you don't see people standing like this in the middle of the day. But nobody's trading with us …"
I have never seen a place like this so sparse and quiet on a random Tuesday in March. It is disturbing just how quickly the wheels of things seize up.
I take out my BlackBerry for a portrait of this trading floor that has become something else, a negative space, but I prove a bumbling spy: I look too intently into the screen, and I wait too long to get the shot right, and by the time I am done, I have drawn the attention of the standing men, who now begin to look over at us, to wonder what we are doing here.
"We should go," says Molton Brown.
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