Top Items:
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.
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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.
Andrew Ross Sorkin / New York Times:
JP Morgan Pays $2 a Share for Bear Stearns — In a shocking deal reached on Sunday to save Bear Stearns, JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay a mere $2 a share to buy all of Bear — less than one-tenth the firm's market price on Friday. — As part of the watershed deal, JPMorgan and the Federal Reserve …
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.
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.
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.
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
John Quiggin / Crooked Timber:White knights — It's just been announced that JP Morgan …
Discussion:
Matthew Yglesias
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” …
Discussion:
JustOneMinute, Jules Crittenden, Publius Pundit, Israpundit, FREEDOM EDEN, NO QUARTER, Top of the Ticket, Classical Values and QandO
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William Kristol / New York Times:
Generation Obama? Perhaps Not. — Sunday evening, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner held a “Generation Obama” fund-raiser at Boston's Rumor Nightclub. In case you're not up on the Boston club scene, I should tell you that Rumor “brings together the sexiest and hippest people from around the globe” …
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, JammieWearingFool, Gothamist, JunkYardBlog, Pam's House Blend, Political Byline and The Other McCain
Dan Balz / Washington Post:
White Male Vote Especially Critical — Questions Remain Over Obama's Ability to Appeal to Demographic — In the fierce campaign between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, a battle dominated by questions of race and gender, white men have emerged as perhaps the single critical swing constituency.
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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.
Discussion:
Real Clear Politics, European Tribune, Economist's View, Paul Krugman and The Bonddad Blog
Deb Riechmann / Associated Press:
Cheney to Meet With Iraqi Leaders — BAGHDAD — Vice President Dick Cheney opened a new U.S. push for political unity in Iraq on an unannounced visit Monday, just ahead of the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion. — Cheney landed at Baghdad International Airport …
Discussion:
Firedoglake
Warren P. Strobel / McClatchy Washington Bureau:
Iraq war's cost: Loss of U.S. power, prestige, influence — WASHINGTON — It was a decision that only President Bush had the power to make: At about 9 a.m. on March 19, 2003, in the Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing of the White House, he gave the “execute order” …
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Juan Cole / Informed Comment:US Soldier Killed; US Second to Eurozone;
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Agence France Presse
