This can’t end well. I really do not want the Federal Reserve brokering buyouts of private sector companies.
Honestly, it really is the best thing at this point. Financial markets are the foundation of free-market capitalism, but paradoxically are built on a completely artificial foundation which is necessarily constructed by government. Liquid money is an unnatural thing, incapable of existing without government, but capitalism couldn't function without it.
This is a situation where tremendous speed is necessary in order to prevent catastrophic effects on the financial markets, in which the painful consequences will be distributed without correlation to guilt. These paragons of capitalism -- JPM and Bear -- are heavily regulated entities to begin with. The normal legal process to arrange an acquisition of one by the other would involve months of negotiations, legal opinions, shareholder suits, regulatory approvals, and accounting work. What the government is doing by brokering this is enabling the firms to cut through virtually all of the red tape, to do what they want to do anyway, about a thousand times faster.