Comments on: JP Morgan Chase buys WaMu out

By: pej

pej — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:02:00 +0000

indeed, I was the first to question the stupidity of this Merrill deal, and also the CFC one. I believe there’s something we don’t know that is forcing Ken Lewis to make those deals. Maybe an implicit guarantee by the Fed or Paulson, or even worse, some kind of blackmailing?? Maybe BofA is simply already bankrupt and their paper is worthless but now they are just too big to fail? WHO KNOWS? the only thing is that the BofA deals are irrational and bad deals, from our standpoint because we don’t have enough information.

By: Edward Harrison

Edward Harrison — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:41:00 +0000

pej, Ken Lewis is just not as a good a deal maker as Jamie Dimon. The Countrywide Acquisition was the deal her deserves the most flak for. The lawsuits that they will be subject to because of fraud and the like there are large.

Mark my words, there will be lots of fraud uncovered and I bet Countrywide will be amongst the list of companies discovered to have been defrauding customers and/or investors.

The you think of Barclays picking over Lehman's Corpse for $2 billion versus the Merrill deal. Again Lewis doesn't come out smelling like a rose. The Merrill acquisition was a good deal, but the price was not.

By: pej

pej — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:24:00 +0000

Yes, I think it’s a great deal for JPM, and very cheap. Jamie Dimon is obviously the man! He has been waiting patiently for the past several years and is now acquiring distressed companies for peanuts.

on the BofA/Merrill lynch, I would say that the deal being in BofA stocks only, it has no real value. If the BofA paper is highly overvalued (which is quite likely), Ken Lewis might have been smarter than what many people think. I have no clue, I am just trying to make sense of the deal he made…