After a stunning collapse on Friday (close to a 50% fall) due to exposure in shaky securities linked to subprime mortgages, it was reported today that Bear Stearns, one of the Big 5 Investment Banks, will be acquired by a dismal $2.00/share by JPMorgan Chase.The deal prices the bank at an almost unimaginable $236 million dollars.

After all the nonsense private lenders dealt the past 5-7 years with second position and being cut out of their money on the shortsale....this security makes them much more comfortable.

I have a few realtors that are throwing a lot of garbage at me and I am trying to weed through the mess.

That woman is on social security, on section 8, and uses food stamps.

I want to isolate my family and it's assets from my business.As you can imagine I have lots of questions so I will throw out some to get a conversation going.

(See my recent post about this).The Background on the Active Real Estate Exception:Rental real estate, in many cases, is held to provide financial security to individuals with moderate incomes.

In my opinion, REAs should stay out of short sales except to list the properties and secure end buyers.

Anyone with earned income (or an existing IRA) can open a self-directed IRA (SDI) and invest in real estate, loans secured by RE, business ventures, and many other vehicles.

Unless you're talking lots of money, multiple thousands, I think you may be throwing good money after bad to put much into perusing this.Jon

Then, the investor gets back the money plus 40%.I see no security for this this loan at all.