LOLFED

OK, I know this is another one that doesn’t have to do with the Fed but the fact that Grupo Modelo and InBev are apparently now dueling over BUD reminded me of this:

My local Barnes and Noble prefers to leave the economics to the men (click for full size):

…and to make it KIND OF LOLFed related, I’ll tell you it’s not the credit crunch - this one did not fall through because of the financing! Despite a 10% runup on Friday from investors who thought it was really gonna happen at a sky-high price, Microsoft walked away from Yahoo this weekend.

As an investor, I now think MSFT is an okay buy (couple reasons: they will either get YHOO at a bargain bin price and thus finally have some presence in search, or, at the very least, they are better off for NOT overpaying on this one). I think YHOO will open close to where it was before MSFT made the offer, but not AS low, since the Google deal they’ve put in place since has to be worth something. Yang should be lambasted by investors, and I bet a lot of little guys playing along at home got burned playing arbitrage on this one, too.

Big Fed meeting today and tomorrow - and you know we’ll be on patrol all day tomorrow with Bernanke one-and-done lolz. But for today, we’re focusing on MicroHoo, MSFT and YHOO, and whether or not Microsoft will go hostile.

The decison rests in the hands of this man, Steve Ballmer:

…and we’d kinda like to buy MSFT if they would drop this whole little shenanigan, because c’mon, MicroHoo just sounds funny. Not as funny as Ballmer though.

Benny exits total denial mode, acknolwledges that while he they did not bail out Bear Stearns per se, the Fed did bail out the economy as a whole:

“Given the exceptional pressures on the global economy and financial system, the damage caused by a default by Bear Stearns could have been severe and extremely difficult to contain,” Bernanke said. “Moreover, the adverse impact of a default would not have been confined to the financial system but would have been felt broadly in the real economy through its effects on asset values and credit availability.”

(Click on the Lolrus to read his commentary [at YuppieJournal])

The NY Fed is now offering an interactive map of counties in the United States and their relative rates of subprime/Alt-A/defaulted/abandoned/whatever mortgages.

Your truckload of subprime fail has arrived, indeed.

Breaking news from the WSJ: “Bernanke plans to tell a congressional committee that the U.S. economy is unlikely to grow “much, if at all, over the first half of the 2008 and could even contract slightly,” but he anticipates strengthening in the second half.”

Marketwatch points out there’s little surprise that JPM is underwriting for UBS, and the significant upside opportunities. Must be nice to be Jamie Dimon right about now.

As the WSJ’s marketbeat blog says… more writedowns? Let’s party! UBS wrote down oodles of noodles this morning and kicked their chairman to the curb. So we’re rallying because hope springs eternal that each new writedown is the last.