It made no sense, and now the reality is coming through. Its impossible for a set of mortgages to be worth zero. This article also hints that the original ‘almost zero’ valuation was an out for the US Government to not appear to bailing Bear Stearns out.

FT.com / Home UK / UK – How JPMorgan was forced into climbdown

But with large investors such as Joseph Lewis, the UK-born billionaire who stood to lose hundreds of millions of dollars on his 9 per cent stake in Bear, vowing to do anything possible to engineer a higher bid, the momentum began to turn against JPMorgan.