Just hours after a 30 story industrial boom toppled an East 51st street townhouse killing 7 people, and, in one of tragedy’s great ironies, taking with it longtime UES watering hole ‘FUBAR’ – stocks fell faster than disgraced Governor Eliot Spitzer’s pants in a DC hotel room with ‘good time girl’ Kristen the whore – as news that troubled NY investment bank, Bear Sterns, was in free-fall over balance sheets ODing on write-downs from mortgage backed securities.

Fortunately for the victims of this weekend’s horrifically freakish construction accident, the good people of Bear Stern’s are being thrown a lifeline by longtime NY IB rival, JPMorgan.

During overseas trading last night, the NYTimes reported the dramatic “Save the Children” takeover by JP Morgan, who will acquire the 87 yr old investment banking powerhouse for roughly $2 dollars per/share – or “about the price of a cup of coffee.”

In a rarely seen move by the Federal Reserve, chairman Ben Bernanke announced he would act aggressively to rescue New York’s crumbling financial services industry by underwriting JPMorgan’s deal with a 30 Billion dollar line of credit, while offering another discount rate cut of 1/4 point (to 3.25) – the 7th such cut since July of last year.

However, Bernanke wasn’t prepared to stop there.

The fed chairman announced another unorthodox move by the Central Bank saying, if need be, he’d allow the Federal Reserve to helicopter him over Manhattan and literally just throw bails of cash out over Wall Street to spur investor and consumer confidence.

Celebrity super and unofficial Mayor of Bay Ridge, Richard Martin, is urging calm.

In remarks outside his 3rd avenue offices, Martin had this to say:

“I appreciate the additional actions taken by the Federal Reserve to enhance the stability, liquidity and orderliness of our markets… We’ve taken strong decisive action… these steps will provide financial institutions with greater assurance of access to funds.”

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