Bear Stearns Meltdown

A $236M sale price basically means that the company had negative equity. Let's get this straight.
The building is worth $1.2B
The Fed guaranteed $30B: The Fed also essentially made the takeover risk-free by saying it would guarantee up to $30 billion of the troubled mortgage and other assets that got the nation's fifth-largest investment bank into trouble.

So, quick math: $236M - $1.2B - $30B = -$30.9B value for Bear Stearns.

How can this be? It's called leverage:
Such an erosion can be devastating for any investment bank, especially one like Bear Stearns, which has a leverage ratio of over 30 to 1, meaning it borrows more than 30 times the value of its $11 billion equity base.

30 to 1 at $11B equity...that's $330B in debt obligations. Maybe that -$30.9B that JPMorgan paid for Bear was overpriced!