JayBlair's blog

Bear Stearns CEO, James Cayne, made over $50 million today thanks to the Federal Reserve guaranteeing Bear Stearns losses with taxpayer money.

You might recall that Bear Stearns, whose investment strategy resulted in mortgage hedge funds it ran liquidating leading to a loss of investor confidence and a stock price meltdown from over $150 per share to $30 per share on March 13. Over the weekend of March 14 and 15, the Federal Reserve blessed a buyout of Bear Sterns by JP Morgan for $2 per share on March 16.

The deal allowed Bear Stearns bondholders to avoid losses as a result of pending bankruptcy even though shareholders got hurt. Since the bulk of Bear Stearns shareholders were their own partners it was argued that the financial pain for their poor decisions was justified.

Rob Schofield in the Progressive Pulse posted an interesting piece about the recent US Supreme Court's hearing on the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Exxon was hit with a $5 billion punitive award after being held liable for creating the worst environmental disaster to hit this country. Exxon is asking the Supreme Court to eliminate the punitive award. Their lawyer, notes Schofield, is North Carolina's own . . .

What is going wrong with Richard Moore's campaign for Governor? After pulling an ineffective ad portraying the Treasurer as an angry white guy who doesn't want complex issues to be studied any more, he now borrows from the losing campaign playbooks of Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney.

"The era of rampant lynching is a shameful chapter in American history. The noose is not a symbol of prairie justice, but of gross injustice. Displaying one is not a harmless prank. Lynching is not a word to be mentioned in jest. As a civil society we must understand that noose displays and lynching jokes are deeply offensive. They are wrong and they have no place in America today."

Today's News & Observer printed an op-ed authored by representatives of the John Locke Foundation, NC PIRG and NC WARN. Their common foe? Duke Energy.