The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. (former NYSE ticker symbol BSC) based in New York City, was a global investment bank and securities trading and brokerage, until its sale to JPMorgan Chase in 2008 during the global financial crisis and recession. Its main business areas, based on 2006 net revenue distributions, were capital markets (equities, fixed income, investment banking; just under 80%), wealth management (under 10%), and global clearing services (12%).

Bear Stearns was involved in securitization and issued large amounts of asset-backed securities, which in the case of mortgages were pioneered by Lewis Ranieri, "the father of mortgage securities". As investor losses mounted in those markets in 2006 and 2007, the company actually increased its exposure, especially the mortgage-backed assets that were central to the subprime mortgage crisis. In March 2008, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York provided an emergency loan to try to avert a sudden collapse of the company. The company could not be saved and was sold to JP Morgan Chase for $10 per share, a price far below its pre-crisis 52-week high of $133.20 per share, but not as low as the $2 per share originally agreed upon by Bear Stearns and JP Morgan Chase.

James "Jim" J. Cramer (born February 10, 1955) is an American television personality, a former hedge fund manager, and a best-selling author. Cramer is the host of CNBC's Mad Money and a co-founder and chairman of TheStreet.com, Inc.

Cramer married Karen Backfisch-Olufsen, a trader, in 1988,^{[citation needed]} and lives in Summit, New Jersey.

Cramer was born to Jewish parents in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. One of his first jobs was selling ice cream at Veterans Stadium during Philadelphia Phillies games. Cramer went to Springfield Township High School in Montgomery County.

Cramer graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a B.A. in government.

He began his involvement with journalism in college, working for The Harvard Crimson, and rising to become its president. After graduation, Cramer worked in several entry-level reporting jobs. Dating back to March 1, 1978, Cramer worked for the Tallahassee Democrat in Tallahassee, Florida, where he covered the Ted Bundy murders. The then-executive editor, Richard Oppel, says "[Cramer] was like a driving ram. He was great at getting the story." He then worked as a journalist for The Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Around this time, his apartment was robbed and he was left with nothing more than his car and the things in it; he lived out of his car for about nine months.^{[citation needed]} He also worked for Governor Jerry Brown.

James "Jamie" Dimon (born March 13, 1956) is an American business executive. He is the current chairman, president, and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, one of the Big Four banks of the United States, and has served as a Class A director of the Board of Directors of the New York Federal Reserve since January 2007. Dimon was named to Time magazine's 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2011 lists of the world's 100 most influential people. He was also named to Institutional Investor's Best CEOs list in the All-America Executive Team Survey from 2008 through 2011. He was named the CEO of the Year in 2011.

He received a $23 million pay package for fiscal year 2011, more than any other bank CEO in the United States.

Dimon was born in New York City to Theodore and Themis Dimon. He is of Greek descent and attended Browning School. He has an older brother, Peter, and a fraternal twin brother, Ted. Dimon's father and grandfather were both stockbrokers at Shearson.

He majored in psychology and economics at Tufts University. During one summer's break from Tufts, he worked at Shearson. After graduating, he worked in management consulting for two years before enrolling in the Harvard Business School along with classmates Jeffrey Immelt, Steve Burke and Seth Klarman. During the summer's break at Harvard, he worked at Goldman Sachs. He graduated in 1982, earning a Master of Business Administration degree as a Baker Scholar. After graduation, Sandy Weill convinced him to turn down offers from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers to join him as an assistant at American Express. Although Weill could not offer the same amount of money as the investment banks, Weill promised Dimon that he would have "fun". Dimon's father, Theodore Dimon, was an executive vice president at American Express. The younger Dimon came to Weill's attention when Theodore passed along an essay that Jamie had written.