Bear Stearns takes emergency funding

``Confidence in Bear Stearns, the investment bank, collapsed on Friday after it said its liquidity position had “significantly deteriorated” and it had arranged for an unspecified amount of emergency funding from JP Morgan and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In early New York trading, Bear Stearns shares plunged as much as 50 per cent, pulling the rest of the US stock market down with it.''