I originally posted this August 3, 2007

Excerpt From Transcript of Bear Stearns Conf Call Friday August 3, 2007
"Douglas Sipkin, Wachovia Securities - Analyst

Okay. And then a question for Jimmy if he's still there. I know you guys have always have been big believers of building your capital base given that you're a little bit smaller than some of your competitors. But you'd always sort of viewed as book value as a place to potentially buy back stock. Obviously, given the environments that stock has sold off a decent amount in the last couple of months. As your stock approaches book, is that something you guys would consider a little bit more over the next, I don't know, X amount of time? Or are you sort of watching the markets and seeing how things develop?

Sam Molinaro, Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. - CFO

Doug, Jimmy stepped out of the room but the answer to that I think is we've been in an extraordinary period here with the lack of liquidity in the marketplace. And while we think the stock is very cheaply priced here and certainly not reflective of the value of the Company in our opinion, we have been in a mode where we think the appropriate path has been to preserve our capital and to try to weather the storm.

So I think that when we get back to more normal times, we get back to a philosophy where buying shares may be an appropriate strategy, I think right now our goal has been to preserve liquidity and make sure that we were abundantly liquid and can weather the storm."