The Week Wall Street Went Wacky

Merrill Lynch has been in my life for the past 15 years in the roles of employee, travel staff, and consultant. So last Thursday, 9/11, the ML walls started to come tumbling down. Actually, this began over a year ago when the mortgage crisis began and we replaced our CEO Stan O'Neil with NYSE President John Thain.

In his reigning year as our boss, he was unable to turn it all around. he did sell off billions of dollars but that was not enough to save us. It first came to my attention when my boss called to see where the stock was at. I pulled the market info up on my computer & emailed her back that it was $20.01. From then until Sunday afternoon, I kept my eye on the stock - for ML & Lehman Brothers. By Sunday afternoon, I had seen that Bank of America had backed out of a deal to save Lehman Brothers. The next post a few minutes later was that ML was negotiating a merger between the two companies. Furious emails & text messages & voice messages were shared by a few of us from our department - this hadn't hit the TV or news yet. Before I went to bed, it was finally on TV and was official: ML was taken over by BoA and Lehman Brothers was going bankrupt.

It's only a week later now that I see how lucky we were to be bought over. The very next morning, Monday - 9/15, I woke up for my a.m. walk and saw that the news was still showing the Lehman employees entering their building and leaving with cardboard boxes containing their personal items. My heart broke & made me anxious to see what was going on at ML.

Since then there have been numerous town halls, conference calls, and meetings. It looks like ML made out the best from all the other brokerage houses. We have to get through the next six months before we really know who is safe and who is not. Keeping fingers crossed that our division stays intact and especially our department. In the meantime, some interesting things are brewing but will be posted at a later date.

So my plan right now is to continue walking and increase exercising while continuing to eat healthy and wise (Psst! Forever works for me!) and get myself a part-time job at the Garden City Hotel. I'd like to earn extra money on weekends when Logan's not here and see if the hotel industry is a back-up career for me.

This roller coaster that I've dubbed Wall Street's Wacky Ride is still chugging upward...I'll keep you posted as the twists and turns are conquered.