Once again the government has had to open up its check book to sort out a private sector problem, citing systemic risks to the global financial system. The GSEs may have been more obvious candidates than Bear Stearns, given their assets had carried an implied seal of sovereign support – support that it is now clear had never been meant for shareholders.

After weeks of burble about government takeovers and bailouts, management shuffles and a thrashing of their stocks, things seemed to have gone quiet on the Fannie / Freddie front. How much worse had things gotten by last week? What was Hank Paulson seeing from the windows at Treasury that forced him to take such dramatic action?

Markets are very excited - banking stocks around the world shot up overnight on, if not the bottomless wallets of the American people, then the end of some uncertainty. Early this morning, Paulson was at pains to emphasize that conservatorship would protect tax payers, not shareholders. Fannie and Freddie stocks are halted this morning after falling close to wipe out levels, so the latter part is clearly sinking in. Getting taxpayers to believe that the move protects them may be a harder sell. Warren Buffett told CNBC this morning taxpayers would suffer.

Other deals of the day:

* Origin Energy , fending off an $11 billion hostile bid from Britain’s BG Group, has partnered U.S. major ConocoPhillips to help develop its coal seam gas through a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project.

* Cigarette maker Altria Group has agreed to buy Skoal and Copenhagen smokeless tobacco maker UST Inc for about $10.3 billion in cash.

* Australia’s St George Bank has recommended a sweetened A$17.9 billion ($14.8 billion) takeover offer from Westpac Banking in what would be Australia’s biggest banking takeover.

* South Korea may give the go-ahead to HSBC’s $6.3 billion offer to buy control of Korea Exchange Bank (KEB) in the near future if it finds no faults with documents submitted by the companies involved, a regulator said.

* U.S. hedge fund Fairfield Greenwich Group has merged with Swiss private bank Banque Benedict Hentsch, bringing their combined assets under management to more than $18 billion.

* French company Manitou said it had agreed to take over U.S. construction equipment maker Gehl in a $331 million deal to raise Manitou’s presence in American market.

* Shareholders in New Zealand meat producer Silver Fern Farms voted to allow rural supplies firm PGG Wrightson to pay NZ$220 million ($150 million) for a 50 percent stake.

* Italy’s Eni SpA has agreed to buy Canada’s First Calgary Petroleums in a cash deal worth C$923 million ($865 million), the latest in a series of acquisitions aimed at boosting its oil reserves worldwide.

* Anzon Australia, a junior oil and gas producer, recommended its shareholders accept larger rival Roc Oil proposed takeover offer.

It’s fast, it’s mean, and it’s sexy.

With a base price of nearly $90,000, it happens to be the priciest model in Chrysler’s otherwise quotidian product line-up.

Now it’s up for auction.

At a time when General Motors is trying to sell the Hummer SUV line – and not getting very far – it must take courage to put something on the block.

But unlike the lumbering, gas guzzling Hummer line, Viper may not be such a tough sell.

Unlike a Hummer, the Viper is not designed for off-road use. It’s no paragon of fuel-efficiency either, but it gives you a unique, luxurious handcrafted vehicle.

Another difference: Hummer’s sales plunged 40 percent in the first half of this year. Viper’s sales have risen 111 percent so far. Okay, that exorbitant rise is mainly due to a weak comparison — Viper’s 2007 sales had plunged amid a transition to a new model.  But sales of Viper, like most cars in the high-end category, are not as affected by the macroeconomic factors that hurt vehicles sales (gas prices, interest rates, housing market). Sales of Hummer, which gives you 9 to 14 miles a gallon in fuel (in)efficiency are severely dependent on oil prices.

So Viper sales are likely to stay stable.

Moreover, it’s a much smaller asset than Hummer. Analysts have said it will likely fetch $100 million. (Yes, it’s a small deal but any move the U.S. automakers make in these turbulent times is being closely watched. )

Unlike Hummer, which is likely to be sold for much less than it’s worth, the Viper business will appeal to a whole host of investors because we aren’t talking billions of dollars. The Indian automakers, Chinese automakers, Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds or a wealthy entrepreneur — can all afford it. Easily.

Chrysler, majority-owned by Cerberus Capital Management, has faced scrutiny over its ability to ride out a downturn in U.S. auto sales that many analysts expect will stretch through 2009. It lost $1.6 billion in 2007. Selling brands and models it can do without is crucial to its survival and eventual health.

Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli has said last week the automaker has heard from several potential suitors, but he’s not naming names.

A steep downturn in auto sales is finally forcing the Big Three to take a harder look at their businesses and start getting rid of assets to shore up cash and cut costs. How successful any of these sales will be remains to be seen. But Viper is certainly likely to be an easier — and quicker — sale than Hummer.

The Lehman Brothers Back-To-School conference isn’t really about selling to kids, so maybe it wasn’t the worst thing to happen to UST, the tobacco company that owns Joe Camel, when CEO Murray Kessler (pictured left) lit out of the conference to try to close a deal with suitor Altria. The New York Times says the deal is worth $10 billion. Putting the maker of Copenhagen and Skoal firmly in the cheek of the cigarette giant has been talked about long enough to wear a hockey-puck sized circle in the back pocket of any banker’s jeans. (For those of you uninitiated in smokeless tobacco, that’s the mark a tin of tobacco makes in your favorite Levis). Sources said in February that a deal between the two may be only months away, but the two sides were haggling over price. The deal would be Altria’s first major purchase since it split from its international operations, now known as Philip Morris International. The FT’s Alphaville notes that UST owns Ste Michelle Wine Estates, one of the 10 largest producers of premium wines in the US. Another product that would be poorly placed at a back-to-school conference.

Other deals of the day:

* A consortium led by Japanese trading house Marubeni Corp is poised to win an auction to buy Singapore’s Temasek-owned Senoko Power, with an offer of more than S$3.5 billion ($2.4 billion), sources said.

* GDF Suez is in exclusive talks with the Dutch NAM oil venture, owned by Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil, to buy offshore assets worth 1.075 billion euros ($1.54 billion), the French utility said.

* Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery said it will buy operating assets worth 3.02 billion yuan ($442 million) from its parent via a private placement.

* French utility EDF has moved closer to a deal to buy nuclear generator British Energy after fruitful talks with some of the company’s biggest investors, the Financial Times said.

* Dell Inc is trying to sell computer factories around the world in efforts to cut cost and improve profitability, the Wall Street Journal said.

* Samsung Electronics, the world’s top maker of memory chips, said it may buy flash memory maker SanDisk, which is valued at $3.2 billion, in a deal that could reshape a struggling industry.

Coke pulled off the single largest takeover in Chinese history overnight, offering to buy juice maker Huiyuan for three times what the company was worth. Braving a notoriously difficult foreign M&A environment, where the state dominates the corporate sector and pumps out reams of regulatory red tape and where nationalistic pride often triggers protests when foreign firms gain influence over domestic firms. Since capitalism is good these days, that premium should go a long way toward suppressing any nationalistic distaste with the deal. Interesting to note that Chinese inbound corporate deals so far are up 30 percent from a year ago, to $15.3 billion.

Hedge fund manager Ospraie Management will close its flagship fund after it plunged 27 percent in August on losses in energy, mining and natural resources equity holdings, in one of the biggest ever closures of a commodities-focused hedge fund. The closure of the fund, announced by the firm’s founder Dwight Anderson in a letter to investors on Tuesday, could be more bad news for Lehman Brothers, which took a 20 percent stake in the hedge fund manager in 2005. One expert said the closure of the fund, which at the time of the letter’s writing had lost 38.59 percent this year, may also have played a role in bringing down U.S. stocks yesterday, which fell after initially climbing more than 1 percent. Lehman shares were down more than 3 percent in after-hours trading.

Other deals of the day:

* South Korea’s military savings fund would consider joining Korea Development Bank in a bid for Lehman Brothers if KDB made such an offer, as now appears a good time for U.S. investments, the fund’s chairman said.

* Friends Provident, Britain’s smallest blue-chip life insurer, will not sell its Lombard and F&C units if it cannot get a good price, recently appointed chief executive Trevor Matthews said.

* Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group will likely fold one of its small consumer finance units into affiliate Acom, a newspaper said, the latest move by a Japanese bank to strengthen its position in the struggling consumer lending market. Mitsubishi UFJ, Japan’s largest bank, will seek to merge unlisted DC Cash One with Acom, the Nikkei newspaper said.

* Irish supermarket group Superquinn has received six expressions of interest from potential bidders, including Britain’s Asda and J Sainsbury, the Irish Times newspaper said.

Once again the government has had to open up its check book to sort out a private sector problem, citing systemic risks to the global financial system. The GSEs may have been more obvious candidates than Bear Stearns, given their assets had carried an implied seal of sovereign support – support that it is now clear had never been meant for shareholders.

After weeks of burble about government takeovers and bailouts, management shuffles and a thrashing of their stocks, things seemed to have gone quiet on the Fannie / Freddie front. How much worse had things gotten by last week? What was Hank Paulson seeing from the windows at Treasury that forced him to take such dramatic action?

Markets are very excited - banking stocks around the world shot up overnight on, if not the bottomless wallets of the American people, then the end of some uncertainty. Early this morning, Paulson was at pains to emphasize that conservatorship would protect tax payers, not shareholders. Fannie and Freddie stocks are halted this morning after falling close to wipe out levels, so the latter part is clearly sinking in. Getting taxpayers to believe that the move protects them may be a harder sell. Warren Buffett told CNBC this morning taxpayers would suffer.

Other deals of the day:

* Origin Energy , fending off an $11 billion hostile bid from Britain’s BG Group, has partnered U.S. major ConocoPhillips to help develop its coal seam gas through a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project.

* Cigarette maker Altria Group has agreed to buy Skoal and Copenhagen smokeless tobacco maker UST Inc for about $10.3 billion in cash.

* Australia’s St George Bank has recommended a sweetened A$17.9 billion ($14.8 billion) takeover offer from Westpac Banking in what would be Australia’s biggest banking takeover.

* South Korea may give the go-ahead to HSBC’s $6.3 billion offer to buy control of Korea Exchange Bank (KEB) in the near future if it finds no faults with documents submitted by the companies involved, a regulator said.

* U.S. hedge fund Fairfield Greenwich Group has merged with Swiss private bank Banque Benedict Hentsch, bringing their combined assets under management to more than $18 billion.

* French company Manitou said it had agreed to take over U.S. construction equipment maker Gehl in a $331 million deal to raise Manitou’s presence in American market.

* Shareholders in New Zealand meat producer Silver Fern Farms voted to allow rural supplies firm PGG Wrightson to pay NZ$220 million ($150 million) for a 50 percent stake.

* Italy’s Eni SpA has agreed to buy Canada’s First Calgary Petroleums in a cash deal worth C$923 million ($865 million), the latest in a series of acquisitions aimed at boosting its oil reserves worldwide.

* Anzon Australia, a junior oil and gas producer, recommended its shareholders accept larger rival Roc Oil proposed takeover offer.

It’s fast, it’s mean, and it’s sexy.

With a base price of nearly $90,000, it happens to be the priciest model in Chrysler’s otherwise quotidian product line-up.

Now it’s up for auction.

At a time when General Motors is trying to sell the Hummer SUV line – and not getting very far – it must take courage to put something on the block.

But unlike the lumbering, gas guzzling Hummer line, Viper may not be such a tough sell.

Unlike a Hummer, the Viper is not designed for off-road use. It’s no paragon of fuel-efficiency either, but it gives you a unique, luxurious handcrafted vehicle.

Another difference: Hummer’s sales plunged 40 percent in the first half of this year. Viper’s sales have risen 111 percent so far. Okay, that exorbitant rise is mainly due to a weak comparison — Viper’s 2007 sales had plunged amid a transition to a new model.  But sales of Viper, like most cars in the high-end category, are not as affected by the macroeconomic factors that hurt vehicles sales (gas prices, interest rates, housing market). Sales of Hummer, which gives you 9 to 14 miles a gallon in fuel (in)efficiency are severely dependent on oil prices.

So Viper sales are likely to stay stable.

Moreover, it’s a much smaller asset than Hummer. Analysts have said it will likely fetch $100 million. (Yes, it’s a small deal but any move the U.S. automakers make in these turbulent times is being closely watched. )

Unlike Hummer, which is likely to be sold for much less than it’s worth, the Viper business will appeal to a whole host of investors because we aren’t talking billions of dollars. The Indian automakers, Chinese automakers, Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds or a wealthy entrepreneur — can all afford it. Easily.

Chrysler, majority-owned by Cerberus Capital Management, has faced scrutiny over its ability to ride out a downturn in U.S. auto sales that many analysts expect will stretch through 2009. It lost $1.6 billion in 2007. Selling brands and models it can do without is crucial to its survival and eventual health.

Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli has said last week the automaker has heard from several potential suitors, but he’s not naming names.

A steep downturn in auto sales is finally forcing the Big Three to take a harder look at their businesses and start getting rid of assets to shore up cash and cut costs. How successful any of these sales will be remains to be seen. But Viper is certainly likely to be an easier — and quicker — sale than Hummer.

The Lehman Brothers Back-To-School conference isn’t really about selling to kids, so maybe it wasn’t the worst thing to happen to UST, the tobacco company that owns Joe Camel, when CEO Murray Kessler (pictured left) lit out of the conference to try to close a deal with suitor Altria. The New York Times says the deal is worth $10 billion. Putting the maker of Copenhagen and Skoal firmly in the cheek of the cigarette giant has been talked about long enough to wear a hockey-puck sized circle in the back pocket of any banker’s jeans. (For those of you uninitiated in smokeless tobacco, that’s the mark a tin of tobacco makes in your favorite Levis). Sources said in February that a deal between the two may be only months away, but the two sides were haggling over price. The deal would be Altria’s first major purchase since it split from its international operations, now known as Philip Morris International. The FT’s Alphaville notes that UST owns Ste Michelle Wine Estates, one of the 10 largest producers of premium wines in the US. Another product that would be poorly placed at a back-to-school conference.

Other deals of the day:

* A consortium led by Japanese trading house Marubeni Corp is poised to win an auction to buy Singapore’s Temasek-owned Senoko Power, with an offer of more than S$3.5 billion ($2.4 billion), sources said.

* GDF Suez is in exclusive talks with the Dutch NAM oil venture, owned by Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil, to buy offshore assets worth 1.075 billion euros ($1.54 billion), the French utility said.

* Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery said it will buy operating assets worth 3.02 billion yuan ($442 million) from its parent via a private placement.

* French utility EDF has moved closer to a deal to buy nuclear generator British Energy after fruitful talks with some of the company’s biggest investors, the Financial Times said.

* Dell Inc is trying to sell computer factories around the world in efforts to cut cost and improve profitability, the Wall Street Journal said.

* Samsung Electronics, the world’s top maker of memory chips, said it may buy flash memory maker SanDisk, which is valued at $3.2 billion, in a deal that could reshape a struggling industry.