"It's liquidity that takes a firm down," he said.
Joseph Mason, a finance professor at Drexel University, had little sympathy for Bear Stearns' problems.
"Once an institution is insolvent, the only responsible thing to do is to unwind it in an orderly fashion," Mason said. "It's not a business enterprise worth saving."
As the mortgage and credit crises have deepened, murmurs of government intervention to back up distressed financial companies have been in the air in recent days. Last Thursday, shares of mortgage-finance titans Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fell after the Treasury Department denied rumors that the government would formally back the embattled companies.
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