Bear Trap, The Fall of Bear Stearns and the Panic of 2008 (HC)

Book excerpt: Bamber says BEAR TRAP is not an exposé, not a tell-all tale. Instead, he says it's a book about the human drama of watching a venerable global institution's untimely collapse. Released on the day Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, BEAR TRAP rocketed to #400 on Amazon as the country held its breath waiting for the Panic and “Great Recession” that followed. “This (book) just tells the story from someone who's there. It takes the reader and puts them into my seat. We all know how this ended, but (this book) is really all about the journey there.’" -Anthony Cronin, Business Editor, The Day’s Business Bear, Stearns & Co., a storied Wall Street firm with a maverick reputation had endured many crises in its 85-year history. Nothing however could have prepared the firm for the sudden death spiral that would lead to its takeover for a pittance. In a dramatic showdown with JP Morgan and the Fed, this is the tragic story of how fortunes were made and lost. Bill Bamber, a senior executive at Bear Stearns, had a bird’s eye view of just what happened inside Bear’s offices and on the trading floor that led to the most sensational financial crisis of our times. He recounts in detail the chain of events that led to the death spiral–from Bear's point-of-view and from the global financial marketplace. He details the securities manipulations that precipitated the credit crisis–those same securities in our IRAs and 401Ks. Bamber reveals for the first time how foreign demand for U.S. capital played a role in the Bear's massacre, and provides an insider’s view of the unprecedented actions taken by the Treasury and Federal Reserve to avoid a world-wide financial crisis.