The American Way - Socialize the Costs, Privatize the Wealth!

Feeling their pain, really... how is this like the war on terror?  Anyone?

Some New York-area residents are becoming more cautious with their spending decisions.

Last month, Shai Shustik, a broker with Manhattan Residential, was helping a 27-year-old client find a $700,000 one-bedroom apartment on the East Side of Manhattan. But then the client suddenly put her search on hold. Her father, a banker, said he had lost too much money in the stock market to buy such an apartment for her.

Until two weeks ago, Mr. Shustik was also working with a Credit Suisse banker who wanted to spend up to $1.6 million for a one-bedroom apartment in the West Village or TriBeCa neighborhoods of Manhattan. The banker abruptly stopped his apartment search because he was too concerned about the stock market and his future bonus potential.

Last Tuesday, a woman picking at her salad in Grand Central Terminal said her husband, who works at a competitor of Bear Stearns, feared the trouble would spread.

“He’s worried,” said the woman, Emilie Bosak, a stay-at-home mother. “Most people in finance are worried.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/business/24jobs.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Maybe things won't be so bad for condo-hunters and stay at home moms--thanks to the generosity of the American taxpayer, Bear Stearns shareholders won't be getting $2 a share for their worthless paper, they'll now get $10.  Because if they didn't get their way, presumably they would have cut the economy's throat to spite all of us drivers of '87 Toyotas!

While the initial agreement appeared to have defused the financial crisis of confidence that undid Bear, the initial terms of the deal — and the government’s controversial role in reaching them — drew criticism from those who say the takeover amounts to a government bailout of Bear, a firm at the center of the mortgage meltdown.

As part of the original deal, the Fed guaranteed to take on $30 billion of Bear’s most toxic assets. Under the revised deal, JPMorgan Chase will bear the first $1 billion of any losses associated with the Bear Stearns assets being financed and the Fed will finance the remaining $29 billion on a non-recourse basis to JPMorgan Chase.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/business/24deal-web.html?hp

Ah, America!  Land of the swindler, home of the chump!