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In the News:
Dirt Cheap Stocks
Seven extraordinary bargains that should emerge from the recession stronger than ever. They include Hewlett-Packard, Autodesk, Crane, EMCOR Group, KBR and CF Industries Holdings.
http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/2009/02/dirt-cheap-stocks.html

Best & Worst Managers of 2008
The best leaders have not only ridden out the crisis so far but also gleaned valuable, often profitable, lessons from it. The worst? Well, some helped set the economic crisis in motion; others became paragons of bad judgment in a time of trouble. Among the best are Obama's chief strategiest David Axelrod, Home Depot CEO Frank Blake, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. Among the worst were Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne, Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld, Circuit City CEO Philip Schoonover and Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang.
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/01/0108_best_worst/index.htm?technology+slideshows

Sept. 15: Dow 10,917 (down 504 points); trading range, 566 points

Wall Street greeted a new week with more turmoil in the financial sector leading the S&P 500 to its largest one-day percentage drop since 9/11.

During the weekend before the session, Lehman Brothers (OTC: LEHMQ) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) for $50 billion and AIG (NYSE: AIG) began looking for massive amounts of cash to save itself from failure.

Lehman gave up the ghost after no buyers were willing to step up to save the 158-year-old firm, and the company listed $613 billion in debt.

Meanwhile, the feds told AIG to look elsewhere for $40 billion to shore up its balance sheet, leading many to suspect it would take much more cash to set things straight.

They were right -- we're currently at $150 billion and counting.

Greg Tucker is the executive editor of OptionsZone.com.

March 18: Dow 12,392 (up 420 points); trading range, 435 points

Just one day after the collapse of Bear Stearns, the market rallied on a 75-basis-point Fed rate cut and better-than-expected earnings reports from Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) and Lehman Brothers (OTC: LEHMQ).

Looks like someone wasn't paying attention.

The clear focus was on the much-anticipated Fed cut that dropped the fed funds and discount rate to 2.25% and 2.5%, respectively.

There was a slight pause during the session, as some hoped for a 100-basis-point cut, but traders pushed onward to finish strong and add another 100 points to the Dow before the close.

All sectors rallied into positive territory for the session and the S&P 500 posted its biggest one-day percentage move since October 2002.

Greg Tucker is the executive editor of OptionsZone.com.

Trillions of dollars have been introduced into the world economy since last July, when I thought it would be interesting to jump in and pick stocks prior to the carnage in the financial sector taking complete hold.

For the past eight months our government has been taking over financial institutions, absorbing debt, lowering interest rates, nationalizing some private companies, investing in others, and rebating taxes through stimulus packages to increase liquidity and spending. The Federal Reserve has essentially dropped the interest to zero.

The government was the last to announce that we are in a recession. Well, duh! However, recession or not the world is still open for business although less of it. Gold is down 30% from it's highs and oil having totally collapsed from $147 a barrel at the time of the original story to the low $30's now.

The original story was Serious Money: Tempting fate with 10 financials -- buying into a pool of financial stocks at a time when these stocks went unloved by all.

Eight of the ten financial stocks I wrote about are down or out at this point. When I last reported, the portfolio was losing 47% but it has sunk to new lows now standing at a loss of 58.56%. This compares to a drop in the S&P 500 of 29% or half the loss.

There are many analysts suggesting that we finally have arrived at the time to invest in financial stocks. Perhaps that is true, but do you invest in the downtrodden or the blue chips?

This post is part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst in Money 2008 feature.

In a year of financial chaos, how can one even narrow the choice of most shocking financial collapse to just five candidates? Financial collapses took down venerable Wall Street firms and government enterprises. Even an entire country fell on the weight of this worldwide financial storm. There were so many financial casualties that the task to narrow this down to just five was difficult. We have chosen these five and placed them in alphabetical order.

Bear Stearns
Bear Stearns held a respected place on Wall Street dating back to before the Great Depression, but in March 2008, this once-respected Wall Street firm was bought by JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) for just $2 per share (or about $236 million). The stock price had been $36.75 on March 14, 2008 -- just two days before the JPMorgan deal was struck. Bear Stearns had been the most aggressive player in packaging and selling mortgage-backed securities, and their hedge funds were heavily loaded with the junk they sold. Many saw the fall of Bear Stearns as justice because it was the only major Wall Street bank that did not work with the Fed and participate in the $3 billion bailout of Long Term Capital Management in 1998. Payback is a bitch.

This post is part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst in Money 2008 feature.

In the decades to come, business school students will be faced with a plethora of examples from 2008 in studying how not to do something.

Picking one business decision as the worst is sort of like choosing a favorite child. Each was wretchedly awful in their own unique way. They each deserve their own wing in the hall of shame, but there only can be one winner. In my mind, the company that consistently shot itself in the foot with a heretofore unknown precision was American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG).

Of course, AIG is now owned by the U.S. government, largely thanks to two bailouts. The government ripped up the first $85 billion deal after determining that the New York-based company needed an even bigger life preserver of $150 billion. Even then, it managed to post a $24.5 billion loss.

What set the standard for corporate hubris, though, were the junkets. There was a fun-in-the-sun getaway to a resort in California, only days after the $85 billion bailout went through. Recently, it was disclosed that another junket was held in Arizona. Though the amount of money involved in the gatherings was piddly, the principle at stake was not. AIG was telling people -- especially members of Congress who approved the bailout -- that nothing had changed when, of course, everything had.

As if the economic recession wasn't hard enough on Americans, seeing the government spend billions to bail out Wall Street has made it all even harder for the average person to take. Yes, we all want to avoid global financial collapse. But the way the government rescue of the banking industry is playing out seems to be adding insult to injury.

Here are eight recent examples:

Wall Streeters can still expect big bonuses this year
When the government agreed to bail out Wall Street, the goal was to provide funds to shore up banks' capital bases so they would start lending again. It wasn't to help them fund the bonus pool. But estimates run that as much as $70 billion will get paid out in bonuses to bankers this year. That amount equals 10% of the $700 billion bailout. Sure, the bonuses will be smaller than last year and fewer people will get them, but there will still be lots of six-figure payouts to go around.

A Goldman hot shot got the job of doling out all that money
Neel Kashkari, a 35-year-old former Goldman Sachs whiz kid who believes in free markets, is getting the job at the Treasury Department of dispersing the government's $700 billion rescue. Is he really the right person for the job? Gawker has been merciless, publishing his high school yearbook page that features a Ferrari and lyrics from the rock band Rush. But lots of observers have wondered if a seasoned vet with a little more political experience might be a better fit for the task at hand.

I've never gotten a signing bonus. In my 20 years of work since graduating from college, I've been hired for seven full-time positions and it never really occurred to me to ask for one. Usually I was happy to get the position -- a new challenge! -- and a salary increase.

So, it grated a bit when l read about bankers at the defunct Lehman getting signing bonuses to stay at firms that acquired their divisions in bankruptcy proceedings. The Financial Times reported that Nomura, which bought Lehman's European and Asian divisions, gave bankers cash equal to last year's bonus if they agreed to stay at Nomura for a year, for example. The article covered a "scramble for talent" that took place when all those Lehman execs were suddenly available for hire.

Bank of America is also reportedly promising Merrill Lynch brokers a bonus as big as as 100% of the revenue they generate to stay after the deal is closed -- even though the sale was done to avert Merrill's demise.

Apparently even undergraduates are still getting signing bonuses when hired at investment banks, according to web site Banker's Ball. The average salary posted in the comments is about $60,000 with a $10,000 signing bonus (plus a target $30,000 or $40,000 year-end bonus depending on the position).

Around the world, governments are flooding the market with new currency in order to stem the tide of bank collapses and slippery stock market slopes. They are taking over financial institutions, absorbing debt, lowering interest rates, nationalizing some private companies, investing in others, and rebating taxes through stimulus packages to increase liquidity and spending.

So far all we can say is that the world is still open for business, but it is a different world. Even gold and oil are down significantly.

In concert with world markets, the stocks in my daring (maybe fool hardy) story I posted a few months ago Serious Money: Tempting fate with 10 financials -- buying into a pool of financial stocks at a time when the "hate 'em" factor was at a peak, or so I thought -- are down even more. I think I am turning into the web's leading glutton for punishment by posting such stories. However, while my stock ideas have taken a beating now and then, I hope my integrity has remained intact.

I took some major lumps during the collapse of Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM) as I candidly posted, Chasing Value: Not -- WaMu one week later - ouch!, and I lost some money also.

Nine of the ten financial stocks I wrote about are down or out at this point. When I last reported, the portfolio was losing 4.8%, and now it is losing 47% to date, not counting dividends. Only MBIA Inc. (NYSE: MBI) is up and there are question marks about this company too.

It's only been a few weeks since Henry Paulson begged Congress for $700 billion to bail out Wall Street, but Americans already seem to be coming to terms with the mountain of cash that they have had to lay out. Then again, one can only maintain self-righteous anger for so long and, with the onset of winter, finding ways to pay for heating and Christmas trumps the desire to set fire to the local bank. Still, as today's outrage becomes tomorrow's history, it is vital that America find a way to package this episode.

The first struggle has been to come up with a name for the Wall Street meltdown (I still like "Bernanke Panky"). However, as that plays out, it's time to begin finding a villain to blame. This is tremendously important stuff. For history to be written, complex events must be boiled down to a single cause, preferably an individual who can take responsibility for everything. For example, as every schoolchild knows, LBJ caused Vietnam, Hoover caused the Great Depression, and Nixon caused Watergate. Never mind that these men were the products of their ages or that history is a complex process. Children need villains, history demands explanations, and Americans crave resolution. Never mind that millions of homeowners signed up for mortgages that they couldn't pay, that millions of investors blindly purchased worthless securities, and that the groundwork for this disaster was laid by Democrats and Republicans demonstrating an impressive, albeit bipartisan, ignorance. History must be written and blame must be laid. Chances are, it will end up falling on one of the following people:

Much as I find it hard to muster sympathy for thousands of overpaid investment bankers forced to walk to the unemployment office in their designer shoes, the news that Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (NYSE: LEMQ) won't be paying them severance made me feel a little sorry for them.

According to Bloomberg News, the New York-based firm recently notified employees that they will not receive a payment on October 3 or after. The company reneged on a promise to the fired workers to pay them severance until August 2009. Workers who want the rest of their compensation will have to file a claim with the bankruptcy court. It will take years for the former employees to get paid through Chapter 11 and even then they might only get a fraction of what they are owed.

Bloomberg reports that it is not clear how many former Lehman employees have been affected. You can bet that members of Congress and the Department of Justice will be interested to know if Chief Executive Richard Fuld will receive a golden parachute once Barclay's PLC (NYSE: BCS) completes its takeover of the once-storied New York investment bank.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, or NAMBLA for short, is focusing its resources on an investigation of whether gossiping short sellers hastened the collapses of Lehman and Bear Stearns by spreading rumors.

The SEC is looking into a variety of rumors that spread in the days and months before the companies collapsed, including suggestions that some counter-parties had stopped trading with the firms.

I'll quote DealBreaker's brilliant commentary on the collapse of Bear Stearns:

Let's just say they did spread the rumors, which I don't believe they did (and, as an aside: if a company can be brought down by the corporate equivalent of 7th grade girls passing notes in class, perhaps it doesn't deserve to be in existence anyway).

It's a shame that the SEC is tossing its very limited resources into wild goose chases that serve to intimidate the people who were smart enough to predict trouble at companies like Bear and Lehman, long before either company was giving investors the full story.

In the end, the short sellers were proven right because Lehman was insolvent, and a buyer couldn't even be found at $1. You can only blame the company's management for creating that mess.

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

With Lehman Bros. in the midst of winding up what's left of its operations following its bankruptcy filing, chairman and CEO Richard Fuld has been kicked out of the corner office at Lehman's Manhattan headquarters -- and sent packing to to a 41st floor office at 1271 6th Avenue.

Lehman's building at 745 7th Avenue is now the headquarters for Barclays' investment banking operations. It has no use for Mr. Fuld. With a flair for drama, The Wall Street Journal sums it up (subscription required) this way: "Napoleon cooled his heels on Elba. The Dalai Lama lives in Dharamsala, India. And Lehman Brothers Holdings Chairman and CEO Richard Fuld Jr. will be banished to 1271 Sixth Ave."

Meanwhile former CFO Erin Callan -- who was pushed out as a sacrificial lamb back in July -- gave her first post-Lehman interview to Fortune, telling the reporter that Mr. Fuld had been brought to tears by the difficulties the company was facing.

If you're in the market for $15 million worth of Fuld's modern art collection, Christie's has got you covered.

In the News:
100 Best Mid-Cap Stocks
Lander: These companies have a unique combination of growth, financial stability and promising forecasts. Among the best are Aeropostale, Priceline.com, Reliance Steel and Quicksilver Resources which tops the list.
The 100 Best Mid-Cap Stocks In America - Forbes.com

Wild Times in the Credit Markets
Think stocks are volatile? The dislocations in the credit markets are even more serious, and they pose a greater threat to the economy.
http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/sep2008/pi20080929_591294.htm?campaign_id=twxa
Also: How Credit Crisis Could Give Restaurant Business Indigestion

If not for the collapse of Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM) this week, I would probably not have posted this saga so soon after last Monday's report. However, since I was a shareholder of WaMu and thought there was value in it when I posted Chasing Value: Are you watching WaMu? I felt it was time to take my lumps.

I cannot go on ranting and raving about the failures and deceptions of others without making sure that I am forthright and transparent myself. I did post Chasing Value: Not -- WaMu one week later - ouch! but now WaMu is toast and so is some of my money.

Since I posted Serious Money: Tempting fate with 10 financials, the results of buying into the following pool of financial stocks at a time when the "hate 'em" factor was at a peak, with each passing day investors have found something more to hate.

The portfolio is losing 4.8% to date, not counting dividends. Some of my colleagues thought it was way too early to get back into the financial sector; seems that way now, and one read me the riot act for reporting the story so soon on MBIA Inc. (NYSE: MBI) being up substantially.