Bear Stearns

I'm not really one for nominative determinism, more for pointless puns. But I couldn't help but think that the name Bear Stearns was a delicious candidate to be the first bank on Wall Street to feel the crunch. After all, the definition of bear from the American Heritage Dictionary:

One, such as an investor, that sells securities or commodities in expectation of falling prices.
A pessimist, especially regarding business conditions.

It's maybe not the ideal sounding name for a company in which you would want to invest your savings.

Unlike bear, the word stearn is not in my dictionary. The closest match is probably stern. I'll just quote in its entirety the third of three definitions of this noun from Wordnet, not because it's relevant, just because it's funny:

the fleshy part of the human body that you sit on; "he deserves a good kick in the butt"; "are you going to sit on your fanny and do nothing?" [syn: buttocks]

The bare sterns did get a good kicking.