Today JPMorgan announced that it would acquire Bear Sterns for $236 million.  Now that may sound like a lot cash, but it values the company at only $2 per share - far short of the $30 Bear Stearns closed at on Friday…and way below the company’s $54.24 opening price that same day.

Again I must point out that I don’t know much about stocks - I don’t want to have another dickwad suggesting a year’s worth of reading material.  But really, this is probably gonna affect all of us in one way or another.

I guess the bigger picture is that the Bear Sterns situation is going to put a squeeze on stand-alone investment banks in general.  I didn’t make this up - I read it on CNN.  Since these firms rely heavily on borrowing to open doors each morning, a credit crunch can result in a sudden collapse like this.

What’s interesting is that the CEO of Bear Stearns came out earlier this week to confirm that the company was stable.  I’d bet that this will lead to some legal action down the road, because clearly this wasn’t the case.

For what it’s worth, the Fed is doing its part by lowering interest rates and making cash loans available.  Perhaps this is too little to late though, I mean it will be pretty interesting to see how folks like Goldman Sachs and Lehman do this week.

What’s really frustrating is that I have lots of stock in Sirius in the hope that the Sirius/XM merger will go through…but it’s getting hit hard by all this crap.  At this point I’m thinking of just cutting my losses, because consumer electronics ain’t gonna be great this summer, I’m thinking.

Time to break out the list of recession proof stocks.

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