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The Apoplectic Dealmaker

TED has thrown an epicurean fit. After a wholly uncharacteristic 16-day silence, anonymous State-side blogger The Epicurean Dealmaker has made his feelings known about the swift and painful demise of Bear Stearns.

Between the Spitzer-esque pricing analogies and some comments about Ben Bernanke’s beard, there’s not much we can relay here directly, given assumed reader sensitivities.

The post is marred, slightly, by some schmaltz:

I am sure no-one, including me, feels sorry for billionaire Joe Lewis, but you do not need to be Bill Clinton to feel the pain of thousands of BSC support staff and administrative assistants in Staten Island, Brooklyn, and elsewhere who are gazing hopelessly at a smoking crater where their company stock retirement plan used to be.

And TED is wholly unfair on his mainstream media competition:

No-one feels sorry for them, of course, especially the Lord of the Flies crowd clogging the comment pages of the New York Times DealBook and the WSJ Deal Journal. Although I suspect each and every one of those pseudo-socialists cackling merrily at the evaporation of billions of dollars of wealth from the personal balance sheets of BSC bankers would themselves be far more willing to chop their little peckers off with a rusty knife than suffer a similar percentage hit to their own financial position. Risk-averse pussies.
But don’t let that put you off the full, unabridged rant.

This entry was posted by Paul Murphy on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 9:04 and is filed under Capital markets. Tagged with . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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Comments

  1. Mar 27   14:02 Posted by Ed Kim [report]

    Here is an article that writes about the hard working folks at Bear who had lost their retirement funds but in a more insightful and polite way:

    http://riskyops.blogspot.com/2008/03/unwitting-victims-of-bear-sterns.html

  2. Mar 27   13:22 Posted by The Epicurean Dealmaker [report]

    Now, Paul, my Nana always said a little schmaltz is what makes the soup taste good. Besides, my lawyers told me I had to put in something nice in order to avert an obscenity suit from the FCC. At least the title is truth in advertising, no?

    Ta for now.

  3. Mar 27   10:58 Posted by zz_james [report]

    I’m not an investment adviser either but I don’t think you need the IMC to work this one out, your eggs and one basket etc….

  4. Mar 27   9:55 Posted by Dave Heasman [report]

    It’s a particularly American thing to tie your retirement saving into the shares of the company you work for. I think there’s an accountng frig which allows the company to pretend it’s contributing towards your pension while it doesn’t really cost them anything.
    Folks, I’m not an investment adviser (though I got the IMC last year) and this is not investment advice - this is a *very bad idea* and only a securely rich person should even think about it.

This post is closed to further comments.