How are companies like Google and Goldman, Sachs keeping employees calm during these tough economic times? They're offering up meditation programs and classes to soothe frayed nerves. But it doesn't just keep workers from jumping off the room. "Meditation helps develop your abilities to focus better and to accomplish your tasks," says the founder of Green Mountain Coffee, who also points out that shares in the company have climbed 267 percent over the past four years. [Bloomberg]

Of troubled electric-car maker Tesla Motors, the shining light of Silicon Valley's nascent clean-transporation industry, commenter quistrl writes:

♦ How did Hank Paulson's negotiations with the CEOs of the nation's largest banks go down on Monday? There were no negotiations, actually. He handed them a term sheet and told them to sign it on the spot if they knew what was good for them. [WSJ, NYT]
♦ Whether or not the federal government make actually make money taking a take in all these banks is still up in the air. [NYT]
♦ Will the bailout really change the way Wall Street CEOs are paid? Nah. They "will find other creative ways of paying their executives as they see fit." Which means Lloyd Blankfein will still take home tens of millions. [NYT, Bloomberg]
♦ The credit markets thawed ever so slightly yesterday following the news the U.S. government would take a stake in major banks. It could take weeks or months for things to really improve, though. [WSJ]

♦ In a extraordinarily bold move, the U.S. will use $250 billion to take equity stakes in major financial institutions like Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase as part of an effort to restore confidence in the system, unlock the credit markets and "avoid financial collapse." [WSJ, NYT]
♦ The government's move isn't unprecedented, although not everyone is very happy with the "partial nationalization" approach. [NYT, WaPo]
♦ Global markets continued to rise overnight as investors responded to news of the government's plan. [Bloomberg]
♦ Notwithstanding the bailout, some hedge fund titans like Steve Cohen, John Paulson, and Israel Englander are staying on the sidelines and keeping their billions in cash. [WSJ]

The United States Treasury has selected the man whose job is to save our nation's finances by leading the government bailout of Wall Street: a 35-year-old AC/DC lover. Oh that's just great US government, just great. The whole entire media is scrambling to come up with enough background on the guy to fill up a feature story, and it's rough going. We've condensed every salient interesting fact about Neel Kashkari, the unblinking anointed guardian of your money, in a handy guide, after the jump:

Today this guy I know ruminated about why white bloggers employ so many goddarn exclamation points. I didn't really read it because I have ADD and assume everyone else does too so when I do actually bother employing punctuation at all it is usually for the purpose of impressing upon everyone the total urgency of whatever it was I just wrote and what better way to achieve that than an exclamation point!? (Or four!!!!!!) But hey wait, I actually know where I picked up this silly habit — another white blogger! Back from before they called them blogs, tho. There was this ZOMG-tacular writer Andy Serwer who wrote a daily stock market column on the Fortune website called "Street Life." It made no sense!!!! Except to me. (The synthetic constant proportion portfolio insurance of online commentary!) So you can blame that guy for everything, including the credit crisis! Anyway it's in Andy's honor (he still writes a blog, but it's no longer crazy because he is on teevee now) that I wrote the evening's Panic Roundup in the Steez De Serwer. (Shall I call it "Manic Panic"?)Okay, so, today's Times byline orgy re-enactment of that coupla days a coupla weeks ago where suddenly every banker was like "OHSHTWRSCRWD" achieved two important things: 1. Reminded "Main Street" (Aside: irk you as much as it does yours true that the pols keep calling it "Main Street" when the whole reason this started is because there's NO SUCH THING anymore in this country?? Because everyone had to have his own house, recall?? Anyhoo) that, you know, every business in this freakin country operates on debt, not because they're spoiled delusional children like every last CEO on the Street except John Thain (which reminds me, Johnny Boy is staying on with the new Bank of AMerillca! See, you KNEW he wasn't in it for the nine figure pay package, aw…) but because DUH, because that's like the basis of all civilization or something!! And 2. Reminded Wall Street Just How Crazy it is with a creepy/inspiring (which? both?) anecdote about Black Thursday over at Goldisachs. Lloyd was freaking out, Goldman stock in freefall, etc. etc.…and then one o'clock rolls around and someone they identify as a "prankster" starts playing the "Star-Spangled Banner" over the loudspeaker. All the bankers are like, what?! Some even put their hands over their hearts. And at THAT VERY MOMENT, the stock stopped falling. Turned up a little even! Guess what had happened? That's right, a short-selling ban had just been announced!! Capitalism itself had been suspended! Think that means there's something Goldman guys find inspiring about this country… other than its free market?? Yeah probably not, but I thought about shedding a tear! Okay so moving on, the big story is…well shucks, got a few hours? No of course not! We're all about to hit me baby one more time with another public appearance by everyone's fave fakenbaked ratings black gold governess!!! (Broad is like Merrill with the CDOs after even AIG stopped insuring them, we know she's bad for us, but we just can't stop.) So I'll make it quick: everyone, except maybe Buffett and John not to be confused with Hank Paulson, is screwed: every other hedge fund is screwed, Veronica Peterson of Columbia, Maryland, who is trying to pay a $4,450-a-month mortgage on fifty grand a year — hey, why not have a go at that, quant jocks? — is screweder, the market that is being artificially propped up by the continued short sale ban managed to fall 350 points today anyway, not that anyone is paying attention to the market because the entire private sector is too busy wondering where the heck they're supposed to find a line of credit when the entire financial system won't trust anyone but the guv-mint with its money anymore. Yikes! Oh, though if Veronica Peterson's story shook your faith in private enterprise, here's a doozy from the public sector: there's a special provision in the new bailout bill offering (SORELY-needed) tax relief to the makers of wooden arrows used in bow-n-arrow sets for children. Think you could poke someone's life out with one of them things? Anyway, if I were really Serwer this is where I would actually round up a few MORE asides and tangents here and call them "Loose Change," but in the Web 2.0 era that gets to be your job! Although if Dismal Science wants offer himself for the position of Serwer's old standby source "Deep Blue" (sug. nickname change: "Deep Shit") he knows who to G-chat!

In a matter of minutes (or anyway, units of time) the Senate is expected to vote on a bailout package. Much like the bailout package that just got voted down the other day and sent all your stocks back in time to September 11. So what's changed since then? We've been sorta paying attention. Here's a comprehensive roundup!

♦ President Bush turned up outside the White House early this morning to urge lawmakers to pass the $700 billion bailout and a vote is expected later today. Bored today? The full text of the bailout is here. [NYT, WSJ]
♦ Citigroup has agreed to buy Wachovia in a deal brokerered by the FDIC. [Dealbook]
♦ The governments of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands have teamed up to bail out Fortis, one of Europe's largest banks. [WSJ, Bloomberg]

♦ Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke's visit to Washington did little to reassure lawmakers, who were almost uniformly critical of the government's proposed $700 billion bailout. [NYT, WSJ, WSJ]
♦ By the way, how much is $700 billion? Slate runs the numbers. [Slate]
♦ The FBI is now involved in the meltdown. The agency has opened preliminary investigations into possible fraud at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and AIG. [NYT, WSJ]
♦ Warren Buffett's $5 billion investment in Goldman is viewed as a strong sign of confidence. And Goldman's stock is way up, not surprisingly. [NYT]
♦ Three top Lehman execs including Dick Fuld sold shares after Lehman filed for bankruptcy, with Fuld selling 3.17 million shares at an average of 21 cents a share. [WSJ]

If you haven't been spellbound by the (HUGELY telegenic) drama consuming the nation's new financial capital over the past 36 hours, here's a big takeaway you missed: Chris Dodd is the Wonk Stud Du Jour. Chris Dodd, senator from Connecticut — Connecticut, Hedge Fund Capital of the Galaxy. Chris Dodd, onetime waitress-thrower and suitor of Carrie Fisher and Bianca Jagger who more recently became disparaged as Chris Dodd, official Friend of (and recipient of a cut-rate mortgages from) former Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo "Moz" Mozilo. Chris Dodd had a big bug crawl across his head during a debate last summer, but that has nothing to do with why he may turn out to be a most unlikely hero of this epic market meltdown. Which is to say: could Chris Dodd be so beholden to capitalists he actually understands what they do?Dodd was much-maligned for ignoring his duties as Senate Banking Committee Chair to pursue a quixotic (insane?) bid for the Democratic presidential nomination as the American financial system first began foreshadowing its collapse. But if Dodd learned anything from his strange decision to relocate his entire family to Iowa the year before a caucus in which he managed to win a whole zero percent of the vote, perhaps it was that the rest of America does not, in economic terms anyway, look very much like his flush little state or the gargantuan financial services industry that nurtured within it some of America's most preposterously wealthy zip codes. Yesterday Dodd delivered a lengthy proposal to defend taxpayers from some of the more egregious ripoffs and scams that could result from the approval of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's awe-inspiring $700 billion Wall Street bailout. It turns out that amid all the cheap mortgage receiving and tabloid living Chris Dodd has actually been paying attention to the industry that has been feeding his coffers all these years! Dodd's plan demands, among other things, that the government receive warrants that might convert into equity stakes in all those banks whose loans it is now proposing to buy at those possibly grossly-inflated prices. It seems like a damn good idea! Not that I would know. But Democrats and Republicans seem to agree. Could Dodd be the Giuliani of the Market Meltdown? I bet the Dems would throw in another abortive run at the presidency if he does! A telling quote from today's hearing came when Dodd asked Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke how he'd explain it to Main Street. "I was a college professor. I've never worked on Wall Street," he said. Indeed, Bernanke is a college professor who has published dozens of hugely influential papers on the critical role of decisive monetary policy in fending off the runaway deflation that begets Depressions. But he's a professor; does he fully understand how disconnected the types of immense wealth accumulated by the high-fee, ultraleveraged sectors of the financial services industry are from the types of wealth generated by businesses that run on plain-old lines of credit and investor equity? I understand a "run" on the money market of the type we saw Friday necessitated a massive intervention of some sort; I also understand taxpayers could very well turn a profit on its Bear Stearns intervention; I further understand the economic malaise that accompanies a deflationary spiral. It's hard to pass off Paulson as some Goldman shill when, seriously, no one actually capable of comprehending even a tenth of this crisis doesn't sport an attachment to one of the financial institutions whose livelihoods will be affected here. But it's hard to think Paulson and Bernanke, with their insistence that Everything Get Done Right Now, aren't overpanicking to soothe an overpanicky stock market. And it's like: well, look, there is no way this is going to be smooth for the benchmark stock indices. But the stock market has never been — it has only grown further and further away from reflecting — the actual economy. That is why 10,000 households in this country are worth more than $100 million apiece while nearly four-fifths of the nation's households get by on less than ninety grand a year (and about twenty survive on less than twenty.) This morning on CNBC I watched anchor Mark Haines tell his younger colleague Erin Burnett his own amendments for the bailout: something about wanting the Treasury to buy exclusively banks' better loans, allow the financial firms to work out the superbad ones, install some provisions to help homeowners renegotiate their mortgates and then pump the surplus generated into Medicare and Social Security. Burnett basically told him he was a communist and it was cute because as anyone who has watched Haines prior to this month he is so totally not. But it called to mind another scene between the two of them a few days ago when Burnett tried to get some money manager to offer viewers a more "glass half full" view on the stock market. "If you don't think this is that serious, you don't understand it," he said. He was right; it is serious; and the truly serious people watching it play out are abandoning their friends, their fundraisers, their inclinations and their ideologies in hopes of merely understanding it and conveying it to all those it will effect. We can only hope our elected officials — I have two in mind — can add "pollsters" to that list and prove capable of figuring out what's truly best for the country.

Warren Buffett, the world's richest man and the founder of Berkshire Hathaway, is planning to invest $5 billion in Goldman Sachs. That sound you just heard? That's Lloyd Blankfein exhaling. [NYT, WSJ]

Everyone with an opinion hates the government takeover of the financial system thing. Conservatives hate it because it makes a mockery of capitalism, liberals hate it because they knew capitalism was a mockery to begin with but do they really have to have it shoved in their faces that way, and the only ones who support it are the spineless wimps who just got really scared when some briefer told them the Dow might fall 22%. Those people, Barack Obama included, are, I think we can all agree, pussies.* Which is why I invite you to take a gander at an the angry rant of a supposed anonymous F-bomb wielding Democratic member of Congress about the "petty, childish and completely in character" things he/she would like to do to the likes of Lehman CEO Dick Fuld and Countrywide's Angelo Mozilo and the "dumber than Sarah Palin" Democratic legislator who won't get them done.

Goldman Sachs has never had to depend on TV advertising. It's far too populist a medium for the king of investment banks. But now that Wall Street is dead, Goldman may have to actually go after the public at large. So Gawker video maven Richard Blakeley "recontextualized" some work by comedian Fritz Donnelly , ending up with this ad prototype that Goldman will likely want to steal. Pay attention, fancy financiers: this is how you sell to real people. Click to watch the future of American economic messaging.

♦ Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have won approval to become bank holding companies, which will give them greater access to federal funds and also put them under tighter oversight and regulation. [WSJ, NYP]
♦ After suspending talks with Wachovia over the weekend, Morgan Stanley announced this morning that it is selling a 10-20 percent stake to Japan's largest bank, Mitsubishi UFJ. [WSJ, Bloomberg]
♦ The proposed $700 billion bailout package turned into a political football this weekend. [WSJ, NYT]
♦ Nomura will pay $225 million for Lehman's Asian operations. [WSJ]
♦ After last week's wild ride, everyone is bracing for another eventful week on Wall Street. [NYT]

♦ The Federal Reserve and Treasury are working with Congress on a sweeping bailout program that would represent the biggest intervention in financial markets since the '30s. Asian and European markets soared on the news. [WSJ, Bloomberg, NYT]
♦ Five banks are now looking at Washington Mutual, including Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC. [WSJ, Dealbook]
♦ Morgan Stanley's John Mack fought for his life yesterday, lobbying for regulatory changes, twisting arms, and discussing deals with potential partners. China's sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corp, is now believed in be in discussions to take a 49 percent of Morgan. [WSJ, Marketwatch]

Stock prices over the last year of Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs.

Damn it feels good to be a gamer: The Financial Times has calculated that Nintendo will make $1.6 million per employee in 2008. That beats Goldman Sach's 2007 record — impressive when you consider Goldman's average salary was $660,000 per year, versus only $90,900 for Nintendo. (Photo by Geek on Stun)

• Yesterday's 504-point drop was the worst day for the Dow since 2001. [NYT, WSJ]

All morning we have been totally fixated the minutiae of the Wall Street Meltdown. And all morning the business media has been desperately scrambling to answer our Big Pressing Questions. Did Hank Paulson do the right thing by letting Lehman fail? Paul Krugman sure hopes so! Why did Bank Of America buy Merrill yesterday instead of waiting for its stock to get pounded and getting in at a cheaper price? All morning long the CNBC people have been scratching their heads, wondering if it took some sort of "nudge" from the Fed! Okay, so here is our big problem: what do we care? There are a lot of things we'd like to understand about what the hell is going on a few blocks south of us right now, but "whether Bank of America is doing the right thing for its shareholders" is not one of them. For instance, what the hell happened? And whom should we vilify? For starters:1. Who allowed banks to borrow 40 and 50 times their cash? No seriously, who ? A couple months ago in an online chat a reader asked Washington Post staff writer Zach Goldfarb to what extent is the subprime problem multiplied by derivatives? As the emailer pointed out, "various financial investors have leveraged" their holdings in iffy mortgages by as much as 50 times their underlying value. Replied Goldfarb: "Simple answer: To a huge extent." Well then! And according to this crazy concept I read about in Krugman's column last week, it seems that in times like these, actually trying to pay off your debt while every other financial institution is doing the same thing can result in a fall in the underlying price of everything that actually leaves everyone deeper in debt, because suddenly its collateral has lost value. This totally happened in Japan! And their economy didn't grow again for another like 15 years. But did banks in Japan even tolerate leverage ratios of 40? And if so, what made us think that was a good idea? 2. To whom do they owe all this money they owe? Lehman's biggest creditor is Citigroup, which was apparently just as risk-happy as Lehman was, and generally, the answer I get to this question seems to be alternately "each other" and "the Chinese" and also occasionally "taxpayers." But I haven't seen a great breakdown. Presumably, creditors are the guys who will see to it this doesn't happen again, but are they positioned to fix stuff like the sorry state of salaries at ratings agencies and the SEC? Yeah, probably not, but we'd be interested to hear! 3. Is it true that banks were allowed to underwrite their own insurance? I'm no expert on the matter — and wow, if that isn't an understatement — but a few months back the Journal ran a story on how Merrill Lynch continued to keep peddling those bundles of mortgage-backed securities called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) after AIG and other so-called "monolines" — not that it kept them out of trouble! — stopped underwriting a type of "insurance" on the securities known as credit-default swaps. They just did it in-house! They even came up with a dorky pet name for the practice based on the nickname of the (totally inexperienced) guy they put in charge of doing it, Ronnie. "Some employees took to saying that if they couldn't find a specialized bond insurer, known as a "monoline," to take Merrill's risk on the deal, they could resort to a Ronoline," the story explained. (Ronnie is now working for Morgan Stanley in Asia.) But here's my question: to what extent was the "risk management" problem here a function of the fact that issuers were writing their own "insurance"? 4. And hey, did terrible short-selling vulture predators make all this happen? How much money could Goldman make off Lehman's demise? Two months ago Jim Cramer wrote that short-sellers, those crafty capitalists who bet the price of a stock will fall, could "wipe [Lehman Brothers] off the face of the earth" if they wanted. The Wall Street Journal reported Lehman CEO Dick Fuld even called Goldman Sachs chairman Lloyd Blankfein to complain that he'd heard Goldman traders spreading scurrilous rumors about Lehman's imminent demise. So did they? 5. What exactly are the regulations that could avert all this stuff? Returning to Cramer, who wrote of his lonely crusade to reinstate some sort of short-selling rule called a plus tick in July, what exactly are the other major regulations that could avert this sort of disaster in the future? Could the SEC maybe administer an annual aptitude test whereby pothead CEOs like Bear's Jimmy Cayne would be forced to define basic concepts like "credit default swaps" and maybe guesstimate the potential losses to a firm if, say, it sold them to insure a $2 billion portfolio of subprime mortgages that had been leveraged 40 times in the case of a housing crisis that precipitated a 13% rate of default? Or maybe we could just cap the potential net worth of everyone in America at $75 million and then no one would try to make it all so overcomplicated in the first place? 6. Why hasn't the credit crisis yet showed up in the rest of the economy? Seriously, we've joked about this before but how long can trashy European tourists fund our consumption sector now that we've blown our stimulus check load buying 3.3% growth last quarter? The financial sector isn't the economy, but it is a huge chunk of it. When can we expect to see this meltdown reflected in our GDP numbers…and if it doesn't, does that say more about the relevance of Wall Street to the economic reality of the everyday citizen, or the relevance of GDP numbers? A Financial Drama With No Final Act In Sight [NYT] Lehman and the End of the Era of Leverage [Asia Times] Crisis On Wall Street [WSJ] Is This The Death Knell For Derivatives? [Guardian] Credit Default Swaps: Derivative Disaster Du Jour [Global Research] Wall Street's Perfect Storm [Business Week] Dealers Plan Swaps Cleanup [WSJ] Financial Russian Roulette [NYT] The Paradox of Deleveraging [Pimco]

• Will today be Lehman's last day as an independent firm? Last-minute discussions continue with several possible rescuers, including Bank of America and possibly Barclays, and the Fed has said it has no plans to bail out the nation's fourth-largest investment bank. [WSJ, NYT, Bloomberg]