Friday, September 26, 2008

WAMU taken over

http://news.smh.com.au/business/us-govt-closes-washington-mutual-20080926-4olp.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/business/26wamu.html?_r=2&ei=5070&emc=eta1&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122238415586576687.html?mod=special_page_campaign2008_mostpop
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=av8gIaGIF6EY&refer=home

WAMU has been taken over the by Feds in an after-market-close action, and is slated to be sold to JP Morgan Chase. Several friends and people I know bank there, and it's causing a fair amount of upset for them. Even if WAMU's open for business and money can go in and out of the accounts, they're looking at moving to other banks because they just don't trust WAMU anymore. I don't blame them. I was expecting WAMU to go under, but I'd figured it'd take another month or so to finally happen. This doesn't bode well for other troubled financial institutions, either. The Feds may just have decided that a low-key approach isn't working so time to start with preemptive strikes to cut off problems before they have a chance to blow up.

I'm also seriously thinking about opening an account with another credit union and Wells Fargo. I currently bank with a credit union, but the largest CU in the area's been gobbling up smaller ones at an alarming rate and I don't want to get sucked into that. WF looks like the stablest of the major retail banks, and if I'm spread across 2 credit unions I'm fairly sure they won't both get acquired so quickly that I can't shift things around.

I'm glad I finished moving my 401K into the money-market and Treasury-bond funds, save for a few hundred dollars spread around so I can keep seeing the historical-performance graphs for the stock funds. I figure today's market increases will get wiped out and then some tomorrow.

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