Summer Rerun: Bear/JP Morgan: The Rashomon Defense

"While there have been dark mutterings about how Bear shareholders were cheated in the sale of the firm to JP Morgan, I don’t have much sympathy for that view. Plenty of businesses fail every day; equity investors usually lose their entire stake and employees are fired. While it is sad on a human level to see people take such a reversal, it happens all the time in Darwinist America. The only difference between Bear’s share owners and those of most other companies facing liquidation is that in going though the five stages of grief over their loss, they took the bargaining phase literally."