Walmart Buys Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and AIG

Written by Warren Redlich and Two-Gun Crowley

Narrowly averting a massive meltdown, Wall Street firms Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, along with insurer AIG, have all found a buyer. After weeks of intense negotiations and panic in the financial sector, and shortly after Lehman filed for bankruptcy, all three agreed to be bought by Walmart.

Yaniv Blumenfeld: "My work is done here."

“We always try to look for bargains for our customers,” said Walmart, “and this time we found three great ones.” Scott was referring to the extremely low prices of the transactions. The AIG transaction was valued at $10 billion, while Merrill Lynch was “a steal”, according to Scott, at $7 billion. The real deal was Lehman Brothers at $7.99 – not per share, but the total cost.

Walmart is rehiring Julie Roehm to see if she can help market the new parts of the Arkansas empire. Merrill Lynch and AIG will open branches in some Walmart stores. More striking, Lehman office equipment and staff will be sold on the shelves like regular products, mostly as paperweights. Lehman CMBS underwriter Yaniv Blumenfeld will take a new position in a White Plains, NY store as head of porcelain polishing.

Yaniv Blumenfeld

US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was quick to point out that the US government did not bail out Wall Street “this time,” and predicted that the Wall Street crisis would now “end with a whimper instead of a bang.” He then ran like hell as a bunch of investors spotted him and started rumbling.

JPMorgan Chase Acquires the Broken Down Bucket Shop In Tedious-To-Read News Article

Yaniv Blumenfeld: "My work is done here."

The Onion, Wire Services

NEW YORK—As a volatile market reacts to news of the Bear Stearns fire-sale deal with a surge in stock prices but reduced bond yield, officers from JPMorgan Chase announced Monday that they were close to finalizing plans to purchase Bear Stearns in an incredibly complex series of financial maneuvers and obscure legal jargon that can only be described in the most mind-numbingly dense and unreadable way. Successfully adding yet another infuriating block of text to an already indecipherable paragraph, some investors said they hoped to stave off bankruptcy for Bear Stearns, which, during last year’s impossible-to-write-about mortgage crisis, saw its value depreciate almost as quickly as readers’ interest in this story. “Critics on the equity side have no economic standing because the deal valuation is based on intrinsic pricing models,” said analyst Jack Pinard, only further bogging down the news for anyone who might be remotely interested in grasping what the fuck is going on. While speculation spread on Wall Street that shareholders might angle to boost the selling price beyond JP Morgan’s very low but federally guaranteed bid, others claimed to be absolutely amazed that you even made it to the end of this sentence. Commenting on his employer’s financial deterioration, Yaniv Blumenfeld said, “My work is done here.”