Dispatches from the new frontiers of finance

A series of stunning developments

• Bear/Lehman Joint Venture for Private Wealth Management
  In response to growing aggregation in the brokerage space, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers today announced a joint venture which will combine and house the two firms' private wealth management units. A Bear Stearns spokesperson said: "Due to Lehman's well-established brand and robust network of proven producers, we see great and synergistic opportunities to realize economies of scale and leverage a best of breed solution to return value to our clients and shareholders."
  
  
• Federal League Tables
  To encourage competition and entrepreneurship amongst government agencies, Rahm Emanuel, Chief-of-Staff-Select for the President-Elect announced the established of League Tables for M & A deals, equity transactions, and debt underwriting by federal agencies. An informal poll of 2008:
  
  
• M & A -- The Fed, for it's role in Bear/JP Morgan and Wamu/JPMorgan. Honorable Mention to the FDIC for Wells Fargo/Wachovia and the very profitable Indy Mac flip.
• Debt Issuance -- The Treasury, honorable mention to Fannie and Freddy
• Equity Transactions -- The Treasury, for the TARP injections that so warmed hearts from coast to coast

• New "F-bills" to be issued
  Tiring of watching its cousins over at the Treasury have all the auctioning fun with its "T-bills", and mindful of the outsized gains in Treasuries in 2008, the Fed will issue it's own bonds starting in 2009, to be known as "F-bills." To simultaneously maximize principle protection, total return, and yield, F-bills will be continuously inverted variable products arbitraging variances in the ratios between a synthetic non-capitalization weighted versions of the preliminary and month-end Michigan Consumer Sentiment Indices. Chairman Bernanke stated that: "We really want a product that's transparent and robust and returns value to key stakeholders."