What if JPM was owed $$ by BSC and demanded it in order to force their collapse......

[berettafan]

Knowing that uncle sam would back them and allow a bargain purchase?

Somebody in a corner office might be about to get very wealthy if he thought this little scenario up.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Actually Jim Cramer made an excellent point about the whole thing last night that I hadn't considered - that the pricing of the stock might've been a flat-out deliberate and orchestrated "snookering" of the Fed by JPM. Essentially JPM knew the Fed was desperate to have a "white knight" ride in, snap up BSC and quickly and cleanly end the problem. So JPM did what they should have done, they knew they had the Fed by the balls and they squeezed. And in doing so, they got the company for a song. And they did it with Fed money, essentially. No risk to them whatsoever. Quite brilliant actually.

The other thing to consider (and I admit I laughed a bit at this one) is that someone's head is probably going to roll today over at BofA for actually paying THEIR OWN money to buy out Countrywide a few weeks ago. Shoot, they could have done it with O.P.M. - specifically Uncle Sam's - why didn't they? Hehehe. Someone's gonna' be on the hot seat today.

[MRM]

Those guys in JPM's corner offices are already way more wealthy than you and I can really understand unless we've seen inside their world.

The reason this is unlikely is the sheer scale of the crisis. BSC went down because European investers were worried that they wouldn't be able to get their money back so they pulled their investments - starting a good old fashioned run on the bank. The asset withdrawals were in the tens of billions of dollar incriments Not even JPM has the kind of scratch necessary to orchestrate that kind of scam. And if they did, they'd just keep some of those tens of billions of dollars for themselves and not risk their billions with the hope to make tens of billions.

Now the Trilateral Commission, theymight be behind something like this. . .

[Porsche-O-Phile]

I'm not saying JPM orchestrated the run on the bank, but they certainly might've "undervalued" the stock buyout price to their own advantage. Either way, those guys got a steal. I'd actually applaud them if it wasn't backed by the taxpayers. JPM getting a sweetheart deal worth (potentially) megabucks in the long-haul on your and my backs. That's the part I've got an issue with.

[911teo]

Countrywide did not have the huge liability exposure BSC has.

JPM and nobody else wanted to take on those very liabilities that brought BSC to its knees.

JPM demanded the backing from the Fed (for $30bn only) otherwise there was no deal...

JPM is risking quite a bit of their own money, after all BSC would not have gone down if everything was easy.

JPM was surely a creditor of BSC, but as stated above they were probably one of the many and I doubt they could have masterminded such a plan with the risk of destibilizing the whole market.