Shock waves hit Wall St. as 2 big firms fall - Yahoo! News

This is what 8 years of Republican economic policy of Cutting taxes on the richest and moving the burden to workers.  This is the result of immoral deregulation of the banking industry, first written up by one of McCain's financial advisor's, Phil Gramm.  This is what happens when you open the gates and let the pigs eat as much from the American trough as they can stuff themselves with without any conscience for who that money actually belongs to.  Millions of homes have been foreclosed and instead of keeping those people in their homes, which would have given our tax dollars to them and they would have given it to the financial institutions to keep everything stable, Bush decided we can only help the banks that defrauded these home owners.  Today i heard on the news that the feds have told the banks, no more bail outs.  you have to fix this yourselves.  The American people can't carry the (up to) a quadrillion they are talking about leaving us with.  And McCain is Bush on steroids when talking about cutting taxes on these richest among us.  We have to bail them out with our tax dollars while they get their taxes cut to the bone.  Bull crap!  ENOUGH!  We haven't seen this kind of disaster since the 20's before the great depression.  Obama will have his hands full taking care of the mess this past 8 years has gotten us into.  But you can believe the Republican's will try to blame him for all of it. 
It's like a "my bankers went to the pig trough and all i got what this lousy hundreds of billions and possibly trillions in debt", T shirt.  Make sure your bank is FDIC.  they are expecting at least another 200 banks to shut down.  If it is not fdic insured and your money is in it, you are up shit creek.
Shelley

NEW YORK - In a stunning reshaping of America's financial landscape, two venerable Wall Street firms fell from the shock waves of a credit crisis that has plunged the financial system into turmoil, as stocks tumbled across the globe Monday in response.

Lehman Brothers, a 158-year-old bank burdened by $60 billion in soured real-estate holdings, filed for federal bankruptcy protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court after attempts to rescue firm failed. Bank of America Corp. said it is snapping up Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. in a $50 billion all-stock transaction.

Stock markets fell precipitously and Treasury bond prices soared as investors reacted to some of the most dramatic economic news in modern U.S. history. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 300 points, though the market's initial losses were not as steep as some investors had feared.

The developments took place as U.S. voters, who rank the economy as their top concern, prepare to elect a new president in seven weeks. Presidential candidates John McCain, a Republican, and Democrat Barack Obama, immediately called for stricter financial regulation.

Obama called the news "the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression" of the 1930s.

President George W. Bush meanwhile signaled that the government would not continued to bail out Wall Street, saying only that "we are working to reduce disruptions and minimize the impact of these financial market developments on the broader economy."

"The policymakers will focus on the health of the financial system as a whole," Bush said during the White House appearance with visiting Ghanian President John Kufuor.

The demise of the independent Wall Street institutions comes six months after the collapse of Bear Stearns and 14 months after the beginning of the credit crisis, sparked by bad mortgage finance and real estate investments.

Ominously, American International Group Inc., the world's largest insurance company, was asking the Federal Reserve for emergency funding and planned to announce a major restructuring Monday

A global consortium of banks, working with government officials in New York, announced a $70 billion pool of funds to lend to troubled financial companies. The aim of the bank consortium, according to participants who spoke to The Associated Press, was to prevent a worldwide panic on stock and other financial exchanges.

Ten banks — Bank of America, Barclays, Citibank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and UBS — each agreed to provide $7 billion "to help enhance liquidity and mitigate the unprecedented volatility and other challenges affecting global equity and debt markets."

The Federal Reserve also chipped in with more largesse in its emergency lending program for investment banks. The central bank announced late Sunday that it was broadening the types of collateral that financial institutions can use to obtain loans from the Fed.

Shock waves hit Wall St. as 2 big firms fall - Yahoo! News