Afternoon Reading: Sometimes the Bear Eats You

It is day two of the Bear Stearns saga. Not surprisingly, it still is dominating the news. So here is a look at articles and blog posts from around the Web:

It wasn’t just the $2-a-share price or the speed at which the deal took place that made J.P. Morgan Chase’s deal to acquire Bear unusual, it was the not-so-small “amount of legal and regulatory innovation,” writes Karen Donovan at Portfolio.com. Did the Fed overstep its bounds? Should it have come to rescue of Wall Street over the weekend? Boston Globe columnist Steven Syre thinks it shouldn’t have. “The Fed stepped over a line and changed the financial world in big ways. The next time Wall Street finds itself in trouble, the Fed will be expected to do something.”

SELLING BEAR

See all of Deal Journal’s posts on the fall of Bear Stearns. Plus, click here for continuing coverage from the Wall Street Journal.

Many of world’s savviest investors took a hit on the fall of Bear, perhaps none more than Joseph Lewis. Don’t worried too much about the British billionaire. He is doing Ok, according to the Telegraph. You see Lewis owns British soccer (I mean football) club Tottenham Spurs and has informed the team’s chairman that “the blow has not impacted too heavily on his fortune” and that he will not be forced to sell the team, according to the Telegraph.

So why is Bear trading above $2 a share (it currently trades above $7 a share)? That is one of the many questions circling today–and Monday, for that matter. “If there weren’t already lots of opportunities to lose money on this stock, somehow certain investors are gluttons for punishment,” writes Roger Ehrenberg on his blog Information Arbitrage.

And finally, you might remember reading about Jim Cramer’s now-famous bullish Bear call last week. We linked to it Monday. Well, click here to see The Daily Show’s take on it.

Tidbits:

More on Bear: Doral Financial, a Bear Stearns Merchant Banking portfolio company, put out a press release saying the sale of Bear has no affect on the company.Goldman Sachs Group is quietly warning employees of another round of layoffs, according to Dealbreaker’s John Carney.Also from DealBreaker, check out its “Fed Day Reader Poll: Will They Go The Full 100?”.No surprise here, but Barry Ritholtz at the Big Picture has a nice chart showing that page views surge on his blog during days of financial turmoil.How does Yahoo plan to increase revenue 73% in the next three years? TechCrunch has slides from a Yahoo investor presentation. (You also can get them here.)Valleywag has some statistics to show “why Digg should have sold already.”