Order Code RL34420
Bear Stearns: Crisis and “Rescue” for a Major
Provider of Mortgage-Related Products
March 19, 2008
Gary Shorter
Specialist in Business and Government Relations
Government and Finance Division

---

Bear Stearns: Crisis and “Rescue” for a Major Provider
of Mortgage-Related Products
Summary
In March 2008, Bear Stearns, the nation’s fifth largest investment banking firm,
was battered by what its officials described as a sudden liquidity squeeze related to
its large exposure to devalued mortgage-backed securities. On March 14, the Federal
Reserve System announced that it would provide Bear Stearns with an unprecedented
short-term loan. This was rendered essentially moot when, on March 16, a major
commercial bank, JP Morgan Chase, agreed to buy Bear Stearns for about 1.5% of
its share price of a year earlier. To help facilitate the deal, the Federal Reserve agreed
to provide special financing in connection with the transaction for up to $30 billion
of Bear Stearns’s less-liquid assets. This report examines these developments and
will be updated as events warrant.

---

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Some Background on Bear Stearns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Mortgage-Backed Securities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Bear Stearns and the Initial Fed “Rescue” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
JP Morgan Agrees to Acquire Bear Stearns with Fed Assistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

---

Bear Stearns: Crisis and “Rescue”
for a Major Provider of
Mortgage-Related Products
Introduction
On March 14, 2008, Bear Stearns (Bear), the nation’s fifth largest investment
banking firm, was verging on bankruptcy from what its officials described as a
sudden liquidity squeeze related to its large exposure to devalued mortgage-backed
securities. On that day, it also received word that it was getting an unprecedented
loan from the Federal Reserve System (Fed). The funding would take the form of a
28-day Fed loan to be channeled through the large commercial bank, J.P. Morgan
Chase (JP Morgan). The decision was unprecedented: never before had the Fed
committed to “bailing out” a financial entity that was not a commercial bank. This
action was criticized by some Members of Congress, but gained support from
Chairman Christopher Dodd of the Senate Banking Housing, and Urban Affairs
Committee, which has Fed oversight.1
Bear’s liquidity crisis and the resulting Fed intervention, largely viewed as an
effort to stabilize the firm and to avert a wider financial panic, sent alarms throughout
the stock markets over Bear’s fragility and more broadly over the potential
precariousness of other major financial institutions. The day of the announcement,
Bear’s stock lost almost half of its value, and the stocks of other major Wall Street
firms also tumbled. These concerns then spilled over into the broader universe of
stocks: the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a broad index of the overall stock market,
lost nearly 200 points, slightly more than 1.5% of its value.
The Fed’s actions were characterized as a short-term fix; at the same time, Bear
executives were also seeking a buyer to purchase the highly-leveraged firm, which
was also one of the nation’s largest underwriters of now-troubled mortgage-backed
securities. On March 16, two days after the announcement of the Fed intervention,
JP Morgan agreed to buy it.
This report provides an overview of Bear Stearns, examines the Fed’s “rescue
plan,” and JP Morgan’s subsequent agreement to acquire the firm.
1 In recent memory, the Fed only approached this kind of specific non-bank intervention in
1998 when it helped organize a rescue of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), a large
U.S.-based hedge fund. Concerned about the possible dire consequences for world financial
markets if the failing LTCM collapsed, Fed officials were instrumental in convincing a
group of U.S. and European financial institutions to inject several billion dollars into the
hedge fund. They did so, and in exchange collectively received a majority share.

---

CRS-2
Some Background on Bear Stearns
With about 14,000 employees worldwide, 85-year-old Bear is a diversified
financial services holding company whose core business lines include institutional
equities, fixed income, investment banking, global clearing services, asset
management, and private client services.
As is also the case for its Wall Street and commercial banking peers, as housing
prices took off and the mortgage industry surged earlier in this decade, Bear became
actively involved in aspects of this market. It was a vertically integrated involvement
that ranged from the purchase and operation of residential mortgage originators to
packaging and underwriting vast pools of mortgages into “structured” securities
products broadly known as mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Such products would
in turn be sold to institutional investors, such as hedge and pension funds, while
some were retained by the bank itself.
With the collapse of the housing market, Bear began facing very dramatic
financial travails in June 2007: the firm announced that two of its hedge funds that
were significantly invested in subprime mortgages were in trouble. In an attempt to
keep them afloat, Bear poured $1.6 billion into the funds. Nonetheless, soon
afterwards, the funds lost all of their value and were allowed to wind down. By
various accounts, the funds’ meltdown signaled the start of a collapse in the vital
element of trust that must exist between a firm like Bear and its many customers. In
October 2007, Bear agreed to a needed $1 billion capital investment from China’s
government-controlled Citic Securities. Later, in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2007,
having written down more than $2 billion in devalued mortgage securities,2 the
company reported its first-ever quarterly loss, an unexpectedly high deficit of $859
million.
At the heart of Bear’s problems have been MBS, which Bear and other Wall
Street firms such as Merrill Lynch were actively engaged in packaging, underwriting,
trading, and investing in for themselves. What follows is a brief primer on MBS.
Mortgage-Backed Securities
In an overview of the general credit market doldrums that are a product of
problems that originated in the housing and mortgage markets, a CRS report
described MBS:
Securitization allowed mortgage lenders to bypass traditional banks.
Securitization pools mortgages or other debts and sells them to investors in the
form of bonds rather than leaving loans on lenders’ balance sheets. The MBS
market developed in part because long-term fixed rate mortgages held in banks’
portfolios place banks at significant risk if interest rates rise (in which case, the
banks’ interest costs could exceed their mortgage interest earnings). MBS were
2 David Smith and Dominic Rushe, “Bear Stearns: The Banking Twister Heading Your
Way,” The (UK) Sunday Times, March 16, 2008.

---

CRS-3
popular with investors and banks because it allowed both to better diversify their
portfolios. But because the MBS market was growing rapidly in size and
sophistication, accurate pricing of its risk was difficult and could have been
distorted by the housing boom.
There are several forms of MBS. The simplest are called pass-throughs —
interest and principal payments from homeowners are collected by the lender (or
a service firm) and passed through to the owner of the MBS. More complex
securities are created by pooling MBS as well as mortgages, and by giving
investors a menu of risk and return options. A mortgage pool may be split into
parts (called tranches) to allow cautious investors to purchase safer portions and
aggressive investors to purchase the riskier, high-return tranches (e.g., tranches
that bear initial losses). Finally, mortgage cash flows may be combined with
derivative instruments that link payment levels to the performance of financial
variables, such as interest rates or credit conditions. These securities —
combinations of traditional bonds and derivatives — are called structured
products.
The growth of securitization meant that more loans could be originated by
non-banks, many of which are not subject to examination by federal bank
examiners and not subject to the underwriting guidances issued by federal
financial regulators....3
Bear Stearns and the Initial Fed “Rescue”

A little more than a week before the Fed’s announced rescue on March 14,
2008, fixed income traders reportedly began hearing rumors that European financial
institutions had ceased doing fixed income trades with Bear. Fearing that their funds
might be frozen if Bear wound up in bankruptcy, a number of U.S.-based
fixed-income and stock traders that had been actively involved with Bear, had
reportedly decided by March 10 to halt such involvement.4
That development placed firms that still wanted to do business with Bear in a
quandary: in the event that Bear did succumb, they were likely to be in the difficult
position of explaining to their clients why they had ignored the rumors; on March 11,
a major asset-management company ceased doing trades with Bear.5 The same day,
however, the Bear’s Chief Executive Officer, Alan Schwartz, wrote that the firm’s
“balance sheet, liquidity and capital remain strong.”6
That same week, many other firms began exercising extreme caution in their
dealings with Bear, as the firm saw the exodus of a growing number of its trading
3 CRS Report RL34182, Financial Crisis? The Liquidity Crunch of August 2007, by Darryl
E. Getter, Mark Jickling, Marc Labonte, and Edward Vincent Murphy.
4 Kate Kelly, Greg Ip, and Robin Sidel, “Fed Races to Rescue Bear Stearns in Bid to Steady
Financial System Storied Firm,” Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2008, p. A1.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.

---

CRS-4
counterparties. Some hedge fund clients, demanding that Bear provide cash as
collateral on trades they had done with the firm, withdrew funds from their accounts
with the firm. Hedge funds that had used Bear to borrow money and clear trades
were withdrawing cash from their accounts. Some large investment banks stopped
accepting trades that would expose them to Bear, and some money market funds
reduced their holdings of short-term Bear-issued debt. Concerned that the firm’s
ability to pay claims was looking less assured, a number of institutional investors
with credit default swaps (insurance policies that protect against corporate bond
defaults) purchased from Bear, were attempting to undo those trades. (Bear had
developed a sizeable market in swaps.)
This ongoing activity contributed to a precipitous and alarming drop in Bear’s
cushion of liquidity reserves. By the afternoon of March 13, the firm’s CEO was
convinced of the severity of the problem. After deliberating with other senior
company staff and company lawyers, a call was made to James Dimon, CEO of JP
Morgan, the nation’s second largest bank in stock market capitalization. As the
clearing agent for Bear’s trades, JP Morgan was familiar with Bear’s collateral
position and thus seemed like a good prospect for lending to the firm.7
Later, JP Morgan’s CEO and other JP Morgan senior officials held
conversations with representatives from the Fed. The conclusion was that something
needed to be done because a failure at Bear could have widespread financial
repercussions.
By the evening of March 13, Bear had been unable to secure emergency
financing or negotiate a strategic acquisition deal. Officials from the firm and the
Securities and Exchange Commission, the principal Bear regulator, then informed
officials from the Fed that Bear had lost far more of its liquidity than it had
previously been aware of. The Fed then sent a team of examiners to look at Bear’s
books overnight. Early on the morning on March 14, a cadre of financial regulators,
including New York Fed Chief Timothy Geithner, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, and
U.S. Treasury Department Secretary Henry Paulson conducted a conference call. At
7:00 a.m., at the call’s conclusion, the Fed decided it would offer a short-term
“discount window” loan.8
Through the discount window, the Fed can make direct short-term loans to
commercial banks. A 1932 provision of the Federal Reserve Act allows it to lend to
non-banks if at least five of its seven governors approve, a provision that has not
been used since the Great Depression. With two governors’ seats vacant and one
governor out of the country and inaccessible, the Fed invoked a special legal clause,
allowing it to approve the 28-day loan to Bear with only four governors. The
arrangement would involve providing collateral-based financing to Bear through JP
Morgan, which would be used as a conduit, since as a commercial bank, it already
has access to the discount window and is also under the Fed’s supervision. Exact
terms were not disclosed, but the loan amount would only be limited to the amount
7 Ibid.
8 This is credit extended by a Federal Reserve Bank to an eligible depository institution that
must be secured by collateral.

---

CRS-5
of collateral Bear could provide. JP Morgan would incur no risk from the transaction
but the Fed would.9
After the announcement, a vigorous debate over the policy implications ensued.
Two opposing views predominated:
! Intervention made sense because of the threat of increased
market instability if Bear went down. It was argued by some,
including Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson,10 that the Fed’s
intervention was wholly justified in pursuit of the larger goal of
ensuring financial stability by averting potentially far reaching
spillovers into the larger financial world if Bear were to collapse.
One concern was that such a failure would unleash additional lack
of confidence into markets already fraught with substantial
pessimism and uncertainty. Another concern involved the $46
billion in mortgages, mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities
(as reported on November 30, 2007) held by the firm. If Bear failed,
it would likely have to liquidate such assets, a large fraction of
which held somewhat questionable valuations based on what it said
were estimates derived from “internally developed models or
methodologies utilizing significant inputs that are generally less
readily observable.”11 A large stream of such assets released into
risk-averse markets with leery and anxious buyers would be likely
to force many institutions with similar assets into substantial asset
write downs. The outcome of all of this could be a financial
meltdown.
! The intervention helps shield the firm and the markets from the
consequences of running a badly performing firm. Moral hazard
occurs when entities do not bear the full cost of their actions, thus
becoming more likely to repeat them. And a major concern here is
that with Fed intervention, neither Bear nor the markets in general,
would benefit from the painful but important lesson that failed firms
should simply be left to their own fate. For example, if, after the
Bear intervention, another Wall Street firm like Lehman also found
itself “on the ropes” — would there be an expectation that it also
would be rescued? These kind of arguments are often used to
challenge the widely held belief in “Too Big to Fail” — the idea that
the largest and most powerful financial institutions are too large a
part of the financial system to let fail.
9 Kate Kelly, Greg Ip, and Robin Sidel, “Fed Races to Rescue Bear Stearns in Bid to Steady
Financial System Storied Firm.”
10 Andrew Clark, “Bear Stearns Saved by Rock-Bottom JP Morgan Bid,” Guardian.co.uk,
March 16, 2008.
11 Gretchen Morgenson, “Rescue Me: A Fed Bailout Crosses a Line,” The New York Times,
March 16, 2008, p. Bu-1.

---

CRS-6
JP Morgan Agrees to Acquire Bear Stearns
with Fed Assistance
The Fed’s rescue effort would soon, however, be eclipsed and essentially made
moot by a bigger development: on Sunday, March 16, two days after the lifeline’s
announcement, JP Morgan, one of the only major banks not to be significantly
battered by the mortgage meltdtown, agreed to acquire Bear for $236 million. In the
preceding days, Bear executives were both preparing for a possible Chapter 11
bankruptcy filing and pursuing a purchaser for either all or parts of the firm. The idea
was that securing an immediate acquirer before trade resumed on Monday, March 17
would allow the firm to avoid likely mass withdrawals by its clients in early opening
markets like Japan. After intense negotiations between Bear and JP Morgan with the
active encouragement of the Fed and Treasury officials, JP Morgan signed on as
Bear’s purchaser.
JP Morgan’s stock-for-stock buyout was valued at $2 a share for Bear stock, the
closing share price on March 15, which represented a 94% discount to Bear’s closing
share price of $30 on March 14,12 and slightly over 1% of the $170 share price that
Bear stock had fetched a year earlier. The boards at both Bear Stearns and JP Morgan
quickly approved the deal, as did the Fed, and the Office of the Comptroller of the
Currency.
The deal needed the approval of shareholders at both Bear and JP Morgan. At
Bear, a schism between its bondholders and its shareholders has reportedly arisen
after the announced sale. Interested in keeping the firm out of bankruptcy, and
protecting their investment in it, bondholders are generally said to be supportive of
the sale. But many shareholders, including some employees with an equity interest
in the firm, are said to be opposed to the $2 a share offer. In heavy trading on
Tuesday, March 18, the firm’s share price closed at $5.91.13
A release from JP Morgan said that, “effective immediately, JP Morgan Chase
is guaranteeing the trading obligations of Bear Stearns and its subsidiaries and is
12 Ibid. Some unhappy Bear Stearns’ investors have criticized Bear Stearns’ CEO, Alan
Schwartz, for comments he reportedly made on CNBC on Wednesday, March 11 in which
he said that the firm’s liquidity position was strong and described a $17 billion liquidity
cushion that had “virtually been unchanged” from the end of 2007. Responding to such
concerns, the SEC’s enforcement arm has reportedly sent a letter to JP Morgan that
discussed “investigations and potential future inquiries into conduct and statements by Bear
Stearns” before the announcement of the acquisition. “S.E.C. Eyes Bear Stearns’
Comments,” the New York Times Dealbook, March 19, 2008. The SEC has also opened an
investigation into whether some Bear Stearns’ investors spread false rumors about the
company’s financial situation as they took short positions on the company’s stock, betting
that share prices would fall. Landon Thomas, “It’s Bondholders vs. Shareholders in a Race
to Buy Bear Stearns Stock,” New York Times, March 19, 2008.
13 Landon Thomas, “It’s Bondholders vs. Shareholders in a Race to Buy Bear Stearns
Stock,” New York Times, March 19, 2008.

---

CRS-7
providing management oversight for its operations.... The transaction is expected to
have an expedited close by the end of the calendar second quarter 2008....”14
According to spokespersons at the Fed, the initial loan commitment to Bear (via
JP Morgan) was made on Friday, March 14 and was then repaid on Monday, March
17. An integral part of the merger deal is that the Fed agreed to provide what is
described as a non-recourse loan to JP Morgan for up to $30 billion of Bear’s
less-liquid assets.15 Sources at the Fed told CRS that it would then be in a position
to liquidate the assets. If they rose in value before they are sold, the Fed will make
money. If they fell in value, the Fed would lose. The Fed’s role in this was reportedly
necessary to overcome JP Morgan’s reluctance to taking on much of Bear’s risky
portfolio of complex mortgages and other questionable investments.16
In a recap of the aforementioned debate over the threat of systemic risk versus
the concern over moral hazard surrounding the Fed’s earlier effort, the Fed’s latter
actions are also controversial. Some observers such as Senate Banking Committee
Chairman Christopher Dodd, say that the Fed’s action was defensible given the threat
of systemic risk.17
However, others, like John Taylor, CEO of the National Community
Reinvestment Coalition, are critical. Mr. Taylor said that the action was an
unjustifiable bailout because, “ … we may be left holding the bill as taxpayers.”18
Expressing a kind of “middle ground” view on the Fed’s intervention, Vincent
Reinhart, a former Fed official who is now with the American Enterprise Institute,
observed that “it is a serious extension of putting the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet
in harm’s way. That’s got to tell you the economy is in a pretty precarious state.”19
14 “JP Morgan Chase To Acquire Bear Stearns,” J. P. Morgan News Release, March 16,
2008.
15 Ibid.
16 Andrew Clark, “Bear Stearns Saved by Rock-Bottom JP Morgan Bid.”
17 William Neikirk, “Fed Action Awaited on Size of Rate Cut Markets Hope Likely Rate Cut
will Stem Tide,” Baltimore Sun, March 18, 2008.
18 David J. Lynch, “Is it a $30B Bailout by the Fed or Just a Smart Move?” USA Today,
March 18, 2008.
19 “Fed Cuts Discount Rate, Backs Bear Stearns Deal, Providence Business News, March
15, 2008.

---