Morning Lehman Brothers headlines - Lehman Wake at Bobby Van's; Poole: No Fed funding for any rescue; No Lehman money market panic; Dead Firm Walking

• Lehman Wake Hosted by Bobby Van's as Resumes Flood Headhunters
• Poole Says Fed Shouldn't Give Funding to Any Lehman Agreement
• Lehman No Bear Stearns as Money Markets Show No Panic
• LEH: Dead Firm Walking
• Lehman in sale talks as survival questioned-sources

Lehman Wake Hosted by Bobby Van's as Resumes Flood Headhunters - Bloomberg 

As Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s stock plunged and television news trucks circled, business picked up at Bobby Van's Grill in midtown Manhattan, around the corner from the company's office.
 
  The Lehman hangout was packed this evening even as the 158- year-old investment bank sought a buyer with U.S. government assistance. And at the office, while the stock dropped 42 percent today, it has been business as usual, employees said. 

``Everyone's keeping their heads,'' said a man wearing a green Lehman baseball cap who wouldn't give his name and described his Lehman job as being in capital markets. ``Ups and downs happen. People adjust. No one's panicking.''.... 

``I've been hosting the wake,'' he [a bartender] said, declining to give his name. He has seen some tears, he said. Customers from Lehman are anxious because if they're fired, he said, ``where are you going to go, Bear Stearns?''

Poole Says Fed Shouldn't Give Funding to Any Lehman Agreement - Bloomberg 

William Poole, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said the U.S. central bank and the government shouldn't provide funding for any purchase of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. by another bank.
 
  ``Absolutely, I would say we cannot provide assistance in this case,'' Poole said in an interview with Bloomberg Television today. The Fed should tell any bank asking for help to buy Lehman that ``this case is different and we're not going to provide that assistance and you've got to make your own decision. We'll help you work through it but we're not going to give you any cash.''....

Lehman No Bear Stearns as Money Markets Show No Panic - Bloomberg 

Rising speculation that Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. may fail is generating less concern among investors than when Bear Stearns Cos. imploded in March.
 
  Unlike the days leading up to the forced sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase & Co., volatility in the money markets remains relatively muted. The difference between what the U.S. government and banks pay to borrow in dollars for three months, the so-called TED spread, rose 13 points in the past two weeks to 123 basis points, compared with an increase of 38 basis points to 160 basis points in the period leading up to Bear's failure....

LEH: Dead Firm Walking - Information Arbitrage 

Lehman is a sad tale, a classic story of hubris and greed. The chances were there to fight another day, but Trader Fuld forgot the key tenet of trading in fast markets: LIQUIDITY CREATES   OPTIONALITY. He gambled the liquidity card, and lost. In the absence of liquidity, there are no options. But wait, how about that Fed window? Well, not exactly the unlimited safety net perhaps anticipated by Lehman management. The Fed's liquidity creates optionality for whom? Lehman shareholders. Suffice it to say, the Fed is in no mood to hand out any more subsidies to any more shareholders, at least not during this Administration. And the Fed isn't going to be left holding the bag once again, not if it can help it, ergo, their role in getting Lehman sold - and fast. Had the Fed been willing to silently wait on the sidelines, implicitly backstopping Lehman's   centi-billion dollar balance sheet, it is possible that Lehman shareholders could have witnessed a V-turn in the stock price once liquidity re-entered the MBS and CMBS markets and values started to trade up. But this is not a waiting game either the Fed or Lehman's counterparties were willing to play.....

Lehman in sale talks as survival questioned-sources - The Guardian 

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc was forced into talks about a possible sale after the Wall Street investment bank's shares plunged more than 40 percent on Thursday, raising questions about its survival.... 

But investors, anxious for some kind of resolution, knocked down Lehman shares by 42 percent on Thursday as the dearth of information from the company stoked fears some clients and trading partners might take their business to more stable firms. 

"Although many investors thought it would be avoided, customers of Lehman Brothers are becoming more and more skittish in their dealings with them," said William Lefkowitz, options strategist at vFinance Investments, a brokerage firm in New York......