Bear Stearns: The horrors of an institutional panic

This morning, I took a look at Bear Stearns' (NYSE: BSC) 10-K filing, focusing on the Risk Factors. Usually, such stuff is boilerplate and not worth thinking about. Yet, reading the list, it seems that Bear is triggering many of them. Essentially, it's a classic case where there's a run on the bank.

OK, so take a look at this risk factor from the 10-K:

"Liquidity risk could impair our ability to fund operations and jeopardize our financial condition. Liquidity, i.e., ready access to funds, is essential to our businesses. An inability to raise money in the long-term or short-term debt markets, or to engage in repurchase agreements or securities lending, could have a substantial negative effect on our liquidity... For example, lenders could develop a negative perception of our long-term or short-term financial prospects if we incurred large trading losses, if the level of our business activity decreased due to a market downturn or if regulatory authorities took significant action against us."

With Bear, we are certainly getting a hard dose of "negative perception." Despite its billions of dollars, the firm has had a tremendous break-down with its clients and counterparties. According to Bear's CEO, Alan Schwartz, the liquidity position "deteriorated" in a matter of about 24 hours (yes, it's something you never want someone like him to say). As a result, the firm has received secured loan facilities from JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) and even the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

This action is vital. After all, a collapse of a massive financial institution is poison for all the other players (if history is any indication). What's more, firms like Bear have extremely complicated operations and structure highly leveraged transactions and derivatives. In other words, the "house of cards" seems like the right analogy. More importantly, what other firms are stretched like Bear?

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.