March 28, 2008
The Facts
James Cayne, the chairman of Bear Sterns, and his wife just sold over 5.6 million shares of insider Bear Sterns stocks this week. The stock sold at $10.84 per share, bringing their total sales to $61.3 million dollars.
My View
Ok, we taxpayers just made another rich man richer, but everyone knew that was coming. As a matter of a fact, I wrote an earlier post that asked the question of who would be selling their Bear Sterns stock and who wouldn’t. If you are one of who is defending this deal, you should remember two things; the man who led BS to destruction is being rewarded very handsomely for doing so, and since it was your tax dollars that bailed out BS, Cayne and his wife just put 61.3 million of your tax dollars in their bank account. Without the bailout, BS stock would have dropped to less than one dollar, and probably to zero. Of course, if you are one of those fortunate people – the wealthy ones – that pay little or no tax, then it wasn’t any of your money that they got. But if you are one of those latter people, I’m sure you will be at the front of the line of those people who are screaming that it is not the governments place to bail out homeowners.
Earlier this week I heard one of those defenders on TV ask how you could call it a bailout when the stock was $2 per share. Well, Mr. Defender, where are you now?
Read the report here.
Bess Eriksson
// Nov 6, 2008 at 7:39 AM
I just listened to a report today, 11/5/08, by Bob Toll and Ara Novnanian on CNBC telling everyone how we must bailout the building industry. Does anyone look into these people before they allow them to convince everyone that they are the good guys? They created this mess with their own Mortgage companies making the loans on their over inflated priced developments, their Title companies not recording deeds in a timely manor so that appraisers would not see how fast the market was dropping. Plus how much money was taken by Bob Toll out of the company for two years prior. In addition when the properties were poorly built, their comments were just close, and we will handle all the problems after closing. That meant going to court etc., or walking away and losing your 10% down. On luxury properties as they were said to be, this was a sizable amount of money.
Bess Eriksson