• Lehman's stock price took a beating once again yesterday, this time amid chatter that Pimco and SAC Capital were pulling business from the bank. [WSJ, NYP]
  

Dennis Kneale joined his CNBC colleagues today in effusive praise of JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon. After Power Lunch host Bill Griffeth said Dimon was "very entertaining" at an FDIC event and "had a career as an after-dinner speaker," Kneale added that Dimon was a "guy talking about what he knows." And when Kneale's longtime nemesis Charles Gasparino argued that Dimon's comments should be treated more skeptically — "discounted by 50 percent... because there's a degree of flackery here" — Kneale strongly disagreed (clip after the jump). It's odd that Kneale is offering kind words for Dimon rather than bashing the dealmaker, given that Dimon thinks the CNBC talking head should be thrown in jail.

• Allying itself with Carl Icahn, Microsoft says it's open to restarting talks with Yahoo if Yahoo's board is replaced. [WSJ]

Former Bear Stearns chief Jimmy Cayne has had a lousy few months, hasn't he? It was while Cayne was frittering away his days on the golf course that the investment bank imploded, of course, and the firm was later sold off for pennies on the dollar to Jamie Dimon's JP Morgan. Thousands of people lost their jobs, the Bear name has since been relegated to the dust bin of Wall Street history, and there's even been chatter that Cayne could face criminal charges in connection with the firm's demise. Then there's the humiliation of watching his personal fortune go up in smoke: Once worth more than $1 billion, Cayne now has less than 10% of that to his name these days. (Embarrassingly, Cayne's little nephew—who he broke into the business—is worth more.) Not that anyone is feeling sorry for Jimmy and his wife, Pat, now that they'll be forced to think twice before ordering up a $5,000 bottle of 1959 Château Margaux the next time they visit Le Bernardin. But those reveling in the schadenfreude, though, haven't considered the people who are really going to suffer: Jewish orphans! After the jump, everything you wanted to know about the James E. Cayne and Patricia D. Cayne Charitable Trust.

Remember Jeffrey Epstein, the "billionaire" financier and Bill Clinton pal who was busted in 2006 for his sexual relationships with underage girls? Two bits of news about the secretive mogul came to light today. First off, it turns out he was an investor in the ill-fated and scandal-plagued Bear Stearns hedge fund managed by Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin. It seems poor Jeff lost a bundle when the fund imploded last summer—some $57 million. Even worse, though, is that today marks the day when he is expected to turn himself in to the police in Palm Beach and immediately begin serving an 18-month sentence for soliciting an underage prostitute. (Where, we're guessing, he won't be able to waltz around in a "JEE" monogrammed fleece as he is on the left.) As awful as that all is, we can't help but think about what a crappy month it's been for Epstein's former pal, Ron Burkle. He now has multiple (former) friends behind bars. And there are a bunch of other people who probably regret ever hooking up with the supermarket billionaire.

And there they go: Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, the former Bear Stearns hedge fund execs who now face charges of misleading investors, on their way to be fingerprinted before being transported to Brooklyn federal court. Our question: What do you wear when you know the six FBI agents on your doorstep are going to lead you through a gaunlet of reporters on your way to court? We're going to have to hand this one to Cioffi (left) who decided to go business-casual for the occasion. A much more effective way to convey the I'm-relaxed-because-I'm-innocent look, if you ask us.

• Embattled Lehman Bros. posts a $2.8 billion loss for the quarter [WSJ]

Dealbreaker reports the portrait of Jimmy Cayne—the one with nearly 200 bitter comments from ex-Bear Stearns employees—was sold to a former employee for $12,000, or "his entire severance package," as one commenter suggests. [Dealbreaker]

The WSJ wraps up its three-part series on the Bear Stearns Wall Street clusterfuck today, and it is a masterpiece of financial journalism that's a lock for a Pulitzer. Uh, not that we care. In the final installment, various cutthroat maneuvers lead to JP Morgan's bitter $2-per-share salvation of the troubled Bear. And it's clear that enemies of JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon (such as: formerly wealthy people who work at Bear Stearns!) were very forthcoming sources on this story, because two of the best anecdotes in the piece do nothing but make him look like a snippy asshole:

When you loathe someone, there's nothing more cathartic than scrawling ad-hominem invective over a portrait of that person! At least, that's the thought behind a new painting of disgraced Bear Stearns chair Jimmy Cayne by Geoffrey Raymond, the artist who's made a career out of painting controversy-tainted Wall Streeters. Raymond was standing outside Bear's headquarters at 383 Madison yesterday and offering Bear employees a red marker to express their black thoughts about Cayne on his painting, "The Annotated Bear." A few employees of the about-to-shutter bank—today was the last day in Bear Stearns' 85-year life—took up the offer, scribbling love notes like "Dear Jim, Up Yours" and "Now You Know What BS Stands For." Make yourself at home in the pillory, Jimmy, it's going to be a long time before these burned bankers tire of throwing rocks at you.

The Bear Stearns name will be relegated to the dustbin of history today when shareholders meet to approve the deal with JP Morgan. Former employees won't have to worry about losing touch with their ex-colleagues: bearalumni.com has been set up so "former Bear staffers can locate their brethren." Which should insure that for every Bear employee who does find a new job, there will be three others hassling him for a foot in the door.

The Wall Street Journal is in the midst of a trillion-word ongoing series chronicling the downfall of Wall Street firm Bear Stearns earlier this year. Today's installment looks at the rapid compounding of the firm's financial problems, which builds inexorably into a crisis. That's nice and everything, but the really interesting part comes when the story reveals what threw a wrench into the multibillion-dollar firm's effort to save its public reputation: Eliot Spitzer and his stupid hooker! Not to mention their old card-playing stoner chairman of the board:

The Wall Street Journal begins a three-part series on the downfall of Bear Stearns today: "Months before regulators pressured the firm to sell itself, nervous traders futilely begged Alan Schwartz and his predecessor, James Cayne, to raise more cash and slash Bear Stearns's huge inventory of mortgages and the bonds that backed them. At least six efforts to raise billions of dollars—including selling a stake to leveraged-buyout titan Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.—fizzled as either Bear Stearns or the suitors turned skittish. [WSJ]

Bear Stearns might lay off 10,000 employees as it's subsumed by JP Morgan. But it's the Wall Street kind of layoff, where you get nine months pay and one-third of last year's bonus. Why the hell are we bloggers again? [Dealbreaker]

Google offered laid-off DoubleClick employees two options: take two months pay and find work at a competitor or take four months pay and join another industry. Some lucky DoubleClick employees were offered contract positions, which means they have to head to the elevator and buy lunch on the streets every day just like any other non-Googler. Meanwhile, further downtown on Wall Street, MBA grads who recently won jobs at the crashed-and-burned Bear Stearns won't get them. The company has rescinded its offers, reports SAI. But JPMorgan Chase — the company that bailed out Bear Stearns — will still pay the no-longer-needed new hires their promised $50,000 to $60,000 relocation bonuses and offer them career services.

In Tom Wolfe's 1998 novel A Man In Full, big-time real estate developer Charlie Croker becomes a religious evangelical as his once-vast wealth dissolves. The same thing seems to be happening to Bear Stearns chairman and former CEO James Cayne, who played golf and bridge and maybe smoked pot as his firm crumbled, and whose horde of Stearns shares is now worth maybe one-twentieth its value a year ago. Cayne is selling all those shares. Like Croker, he considers such worldly possessions baggage and, to hear the Times tell it, is on the verge of some kind of spiritual awakening:

Brock Purpura, the CEO of ad network Etology, says it's easier to staff his sales team with Wall Street's leavings than to hire ex-Yahoos. Purpura told SAI that since you can't outsource ad sales like you can tech, ad-supported startups have begun offering ex-Yahoos equity. If shares aren't available, Purpura says ex-Yahoos demand between $200,000 to $250,000 to sign. It's more than Purpura, for one, is willing to pay. Especially since ex-Bear Stearns employees and other bankers, well-suited enough to the numbers-based ad game, have shown an eagerness to take on more work for less pay. We've heard they like the punishment.(Photo by Mr.Thomas)

Dominatrix takes pity on Bear Stearns traders, offers discount. Also, caveat: "You see, in my experience finance guys usually want things in their asses. I do not offer anal play on demand." Of course, past performance is no guarantee of future results. [Valleywag]

Goodhearted dominatrix Mistress Victoria X doesn't have a soft spot towards the newly unrich men of Bear Stearns; it's more mercenary compassion. For a limited time, she's offering a per-hour discount equivalent to JPMorgan Chase's current offer for their stock: $10. "I approached this decision with some trepidation," she blogs. "You see, in my experience finance guys usually want things in their asses. I do not offer anal play on demand. Consequently the majority of my clients are lawyers." Take heed, boys: the Manhattan-based domme is also available for travel.

Soon-to-be JPMorgan Chase subsidiary Bear Stearns will lay off 7,000 workers. The worst of it, reports Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget, is that today's tough job market on the Street makes it a particularly bad time to get laid off. Fortunately, Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget also reports, Silicon Alley Insider is hiring! Where Blodget learned to describe the job market in such a self-beneficial way, nobody knows."We won't drown you in cash the way Bear would have," former financial analyst Henry Blodget writes, "but we need those same same analytical, writing, and competing skills."