Bear Stearns, obviously. It would be easier to list all the sites and blogs which have not had something to say on the issue, but there's good commentary from Yves Smith (writing before the fact) - he points out that one trigger could have been the Fridayy downgrades of Bear by the rating agencies, and goes on to say why this made a rapid buyout imperative. Mark McQueen goes through the deal in detail, making, as others have, the point that Bear Stearns' headquarters building is worth about $1.2 billion; so the entire rest of the company is worth almost negative $1 billion. Makes you wonder why there's a retention budget; surely they should be paying them to leave?

This Reuters story lets drop that of the $6 billion JP Morgan is budgeting for integration costs, $1 billion will be for "severance and retention". Glad to see that the golden parachutes have survived the Controlled Flight Into Terrain, to stretch a metaphor.

And James Cullen looks at the mistakes Bear made.

Who's next to go? The smart money's on (or, rather, is staying well away from) Lehman Brothers, says Lars Toomre. He cites unsourced reports that CEO Richard Fuld spent the weekend on the phone to his staff and Hank Paulson, before cutting a trip to India short - and reminds us that the bank still has a large commercial mortgage portfolio.

The Fed's been active - not content with agreeing to take over $30 billion of Bear's more, ahem, "illiquid" assets, it's also started to support securities dealers directly. Tim Duy comments here at length.

The ITN newsreader Sir Trevor MacDonald became notorious for his ability to deliver a half-hour bulletin full of war, famine and disaster, and then finish it up with the words "...and finally" followed by a heartwarming tale of a skateboarding dog or tapdancing oyster. In that tradition, "and finally, a team of four pupils from Tiffin Girls School has won £10,000 in the Bank of England's 2.0% Interest Rate Challenge".

Spiralling commodity prices, rising inflation expectations, the weakening pound, falling house prices, the slowdown in the United States and the credit crunch were among the main factors concerning most of the teams.

Teresa Song, the dove on The Tiffin Girls' School team, argued that the inflationary pressures affecting the UK were short-term concerns, while the downside risks, including the ramifications of a slowdown in the United States, were medium-term risks that could push inflation below the target. She told the judges: “The UK has too much of a tendency to adopt a wait-and-see approach.”

Her team-mates outvoted her, arguing that some inflationary risks were of concern in the short and medium term. They added that opting to cut rates “would send out the completely wrong signal to the market”.

But did they all go out for a curry afterwards, as (I am informed) the real MPC does after each monthly meeting?

The ominous note comes at the end:

After handing out the prizes... Mervyn King, the Bank's Governor, said: “We believe it is the application of economic analysis that has produced the years of stability which means that you don't remember high inflation - although it may be that we can give you a banking crisis or two to give you something to think about!”

Really, Mervyn, you shouldn't feel you have to.