A Bear Stearns trader with a sense of humor taped a hard-earned two-buck greenback to the front door of Bear's corporate headquarters in New York. $2 is the per-share value that JPMorgan Chase agreed to purchase Bear Stearns for, a far cry from the $60 a share that the bank was trading at last week. Our best caption is above, but you can do better. Leave one in the comments below. (Photo by Reuters/Kristina Cooke)

Late Sunday night, JP Morgan Chase agreed to buy cash-strapped investment bank Bear Stearns for $2 a share, or $236 million. Last week, the company was valued at more than $14 billion. This is one of the swiftest corporate falls in history. But just how bad was it? Here's a list of things that cost more than the century-old Bear Stearns.

"Mad Money" host and bug-eyed madman Jim Cramer went on CNBC today to clarify his statements from last week about Bear Stearns, when he urged people not to move their money out of the firm. As we pointed out earlier in his defense, he was not referring to the company's stock, and his advice was actually perfectly sound. "Do you know what would happen on this show if I came out and said I want everyone to take their money out of X bank?" he ranted today. "Jim Cramer causes a run on X bank!" As it turns out, the run on the bank happened anyways. This video, originally posted on YouTube, features Cramer's defense today along with some, ahem, editorial comments against him; we have to say we still agree with him in this particular case. Although we would never take his stock tips. Click to watch the clip.

An editorial comment from an unknown Bear Stearns employee on the venerable securities firm's $2/share buyout by JPMorgan. [Dealbreaker]

So how was your weekend? Probably not great if you work at Bear Stearns. But even with looming job cuts and a pathetic bail out from the Feds, Bear Stearns' website is still boasting about awards it won in 2007 and 2006 for BearXplorer, a client side risk analytics initiative, whatever that means. The company still claims, "never an unprofitable year." I'd say getting bought out for $2 a share qualifies as unprofitable, but what do I know about banking?

"Bear Stearns is not in trouble!" Jim Cramer, CNBC's bug-eyed "Mad Money" host who is to finance what Carrot Top is to comedy, shouted last Tuesday. "Don't move your money from Bear! That's just being silly." The immediate reaction to seeing his advice in the wake of Bear's collapse is: what an idiot. But really, his advice was not bad! Cramer—a famously bad prognosticator—noted that Bear would, at worst, be taken over, meaning those who had money with the firm would have their investments guaranteed by a more deep-pocketed buyer. Which is exactly what happened when JPMorgan bought Bear over the weekend. Note that he was not speaking about Bear's stock price [last Tuesday: over $60. Now: toilet paper]. What have we learned? Only Wild Jim Cramer can stop the collapse of the American economy. Click to watch the crazy savant's ill-fated harangue. [via WJNO]

This morning, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan is warning of the worst financial crisis since World War II, the Wall Street Journal is reporting on its front page that "Banks Fear a Deepening of Turmoil," Asian stocks plunged and the federal government is financing the purchase by JP Morgan Chase of fast-collapsing investment bank Bear Stearns for less than a tenth of its stock market capitalization and about one-quarter of the value of its headquarters building. The biggest story for the moment, and the biggest single cause the current wave of fear, is the near bankruptcy of Stearns this weekend after its trading partners started asking for money owed, its credit ratings got cut and banks stopped lending the company money against even top-quality mortgage bonds. Where was the Bear Stearns' Chairman, James Cayne amid all this? Playing bridge in a tournament, a source told the Journal, until he finally returned to New York Saturday, two days after lenders starting reining in the company's credit. This is the same James Cayne embarrassed in the Times in July for playing golf amid another Stearns near-meltdown and downright humiliated in the Journal just this past November, after another time he played bridge during a company crisis, and also allegedly smoked pot:

Like you, I went to the New York Times homepage this morning hoping to read a charming story about Barack Obama's upbringing. Instead, I was bombarded with news that J.P. Morgan (along with the Fed) was bailing out Bear Stearns. Oh nos! And here I thought Bear Stearns and J.P. Morgan were the same company. (Not exactly true, but whenever bankers would tell me where they work, it was like you live in Murray Hill or Gramercy? Is there a difference?) I know what you're thinking. "What does this have to do with me? All my money is in credit card debt. And what does subprime mortgage even mean?" Well, funny you should ask, because subprime mortgages got Bear Stearns got into this mess.

Advertisers will spend $1.35 billion on web video in 2008, according to Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck. He says that number should grow to $4.3 billion by 2011, which will still only be about 3.3 percent of total TV spending. [SAI]

Jeff Hammerbacher, a research scientist at Facebook, is giving a presentation at Yahoo today about large-scale data analysis. The Harvard grad's prior experience before coming to Facebook? Developing price models for mortgage-backed securities at Bear Stearns — the same kind of securities that led Bear to write off $1.9 billion in December. Does this explain why Facebook is sending him to give a talk at a competitor? Take note, Yahoos. (Photo by jakob)

As the collapsing housing market brings the nation closer to financial ruin and banks threaten to end the quarter with multi-billion dollar losses, New York's bankers are now, finally, turning against each other and fighting in public. Unfortunately it was part of a big sanctioned boxing tournament and not like a street brawl or something. (Yet!)

"Don't y'all listen to that crazy Wall Street Journal," Bear Stearns CEO Jimmy Cayne is running around saying all day. Actually: "Don't be distracted by the noise," is what he said. Then he said the paper was full of lies, which is unlikely! Bear Stearns shares were down 4% over the course of the day, after the WSJ ran a monster story saying, among other things, that Cayne was MIA for ten days this summer—without so much as a cellphone—while two of the company's funds were collapsing. Last year, Cayne took home $34 million, and also he smokes a lot of pot for a 73-year-old, which is really excellent. We bet it is some good stuff too. He is sort of our hero, particularly as we're not shareholders!