Aftershocks at Bear Stearns

Aftershocks at Bear Stearns:

"In a week it was all gone: Bear Stearns' (BSC) reputation, culture, identity; the savings of many of its 14,000 employees; and possibly their jobs, too. 'The speed of the collapse was traumatic,' says one banker who has worked at Bear for a decade. 'People aren't jumping out of windows,' he says. 'But we are all kind of anxious.'

A year ago Bear Stearns was worth about $20billion....On Mar.24, JPMorgan, under fire for unseemly opportunism, quintupled the offer to $10 a share, or $1.2 billion.....A comedown of such magnitude would be traumatic for any organization. But Bear Stearns was a Wall Street outlier. Although the country's fifth-largest investment bank, Bear still considered itself the scrappy underdog. A former chief executive, Ace Greenberg, liked to say Bear hired people who were poor, smart, and had a deep desire to become rich. It was a place of sharp elbows, but if you succeeded you were part of a family....Within the next couple of weeks, people expect the layoffs at Bear to begin. ""

I do know quite a few people at Bear and my heart goes out to you. Good luck. Stay positive. Things will work out for you. May not be what you had thought a few weeks ago, but who knows, maybe you will like things better.