Wow – that’s a big time ouch. From Freep.com:

The subprime slop at Bear Stearns Cos. — the investment bank that crumbled in the spring after bad bets on high-risk mortgages — cost Michigan real money.

Michigan’s state pension funds lost more than $62 million on Bear Stearns stock from Dec. 14, 2006, through March 14, according to state officials.

And Michigan is hoping to take the lead role in an effort to recoup losses for individual and institutional investors who join a pending class action against Bear Stearns. Attorneys estimate damages for the group at several billion dollars.

The lawsuit alleges that Bear Stearns and individual defendants broke securities laws by misleading investors about the firm’s exposure to subprime mortgages from Dec. 14, 2006, through March 14.

The Bear Stearns fiasco was one of the more drama-filled developments of the credit crunch.

Over one weekend in March, the Federal Reserve worked to engineer a deal in which Bear Stearns would be sold for a price of just $2 a share — a shocking fire sale, as the stock had closed at $30 a share the previous Friday.

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