The largest banking failure in US history happened a few hours ago when the Office of Thift Supervision took control of the Bank. J.P. Morgan Chase purchased the banking assets for $1.9 billion dollars. To quote the AP: “One positive is that the sale of WaMu’s assets to JPMorgan Chase prevents the thrift’s collapse from depleting the FDIC’sinsurance fund.” (source). The new JPMorgan Chase is now the 2nd largest bank in the United States.
As a customer of WaMu (or rather, I guess, former customer), WaMu customer support has gotten horrible over the last several months and I think they would have failed at some point because of it.
I believe that this whole mess has been the end game that has been going on behind the scenes for many years…
Update: 11:05 pm – I believe that this bank failure was due to the “bailout” falling apart tonight. The powers that be decided that the Senators needed some “motivation” to get something passed. What a better way to do that than to have the largest bank failure in US history happen the day before the deadline that Secretary Paulson said this bailout had to be passed by or else the entire economy would collapse… Mark my words, this “bailout” will pass at least one chamber tomorrow, if not both, in time for John McCain to triumphantly arrive at the debate at the University of Alabama…
