Goverment takes over a busted up WaMu

Washington Mutual Inc. aka WaMu faced going under today. the US government came in and seized it's assets and sold WaMu's banking to JP Morgan Chase.

WaMu stock has been on shaky ground since last week's market melt down on Monday, but it seems that that news made people nervous and a lot of them took their money out of WaMu bank, $16.7 billion worth of money. WaMu couldn't take that big of a hit...a bank going under because of a run by people to pull their money on the bank, dear god where did I see that before? oh yeah that was one of the key factors that caused the great depression.

of course to top those banks in that went under during the depression, Washington Mutual's going under makes it the biggest banking failure in history.

now to be far WaMu was having problems before last week market meltdown. They where a part of the subprime mortgage loans mess. They took a big hit when a lot of people couldn't pay their mortgage and ended up defaulting. Thought to the companies credit they did start to work with people to work out ways they could pay. But that was after the company already took great losses because of subprime fiasco.

The news of the buyout has had negative reaction around the world. Asian investors are now more nervous about investing in American and the stock market is down as I write this.

also I can't help but wondering if JP Morgan Chase buying WaMu is a good ideal in the long run. Yes, I can see where the selling it to JP Morgan and Chase is better then just letting it go under but in an era when we are facing banks that are said to be to big to go under why are allowing JP Morgan Chase to get bigger and bigger.

JP Morgan Chase is the nation's 2nd largest bank but going by deposits it is the largest.

Peter DeFazio wants a 0.25% tax on stocks

Oregon's congressperson person Peter DeFazio is calling for congress to put a 0.25% tax on all transactions of stocks.

He states why should the average tax payer bail out wall street instead let Wall street pay for their bailout.

I think there are many people that feel like him. Thought giving that yesterday congress as already reach an agreement I wonder if it is to late for DeFazio to try and past this bill.

I think a lot of people would be behind hit and it a really small tax that I don't think most people that invest in the stock market will be heavily hit by it.

why political idealogy and economics don't mix

people are posting blame on what happen to the economy this week on a number of things.

a lot of blame is on deregulation.

and truth is that is a big problem, but it's not the root of the issue.

the problem really is the fact that we have allowed economic policies be dictated by mindless political rhetoric.

In this cause the mindless political rhetoric was that of Reaganomics, small government, deregulation, etc. But it wouldn't really matter if it was something ideal that people would be more willing to label as left-wing or right-wing, when it comes to steering the economy following one ideal regardless of the facts around you can cause you to crash.

we expect our politicians to steer our economy (or at least do what they can) to benefit us. but many politicians don't really have a basic understanding of economics. it easy for people to leech onto something that sounds the nicest (ie get them the most votes) and in some cases may have been good ideal under the conditions of a certain time period. but factors change and at times those ideals need to be tweaked or even dropped completely.

But because politicians don't always really know what they are doing when it comes to the economy it more often that they stick with their old ideals instead of looking at the numbers an fixing them.

In this case the problem was that we over deregulated the finical industry. truth is we would have ran into (different) problems sooner if we over regulated.

I think we are going to need some major regulation to fix many of the problems that caused the crash we had last Monday. But I don't think regulation should become an ideology like we saw with the deregulators.

there was some good news on Monday

after all the bad news yestorday it is easy to over look this little bit of good news, the price of crude oil dropped.

though with the events of Ike I'm not sure if we will see the effects we would have hoped for with a drop in crude.

maniac monday

wow what a day!!!

Lehman brothers filed for bankruptcies

and AIG had to go looking for loans to stay in business

and because of the news the stock market when down around 500 points.

one of the big news stories is the fact that after repeatedly bailing out big companies like these the us government has decided not to bail out AIG or Lehman brothers.

Bush basically released a statement saying he will let nature do its course in the finical market but will try to prevent it form having a bad impact on the rest of the nation.

America jobs still going down the drain

The Labor Department released last months figures for unemployment and it has jumped higher then people expected. people thought unemployment would be around 5% but it is at 6.1%.

This is the 8th straight month of American job lost.

the New York Times pointed out that

So far, 605,000 jobs have disappeared since the start of the year, with employers slashing 84,000 jobs in August alone

The stock market was already down yesterday because of what people new the report was coming and expected bad news. now that the news is a little worst then expect the stock market is staying down.

the job losses are coming even though exports of American made goods go up. why that is I'm not 100 percent sure. could be because the people working are working harder. illegal immigrants are working at the jobs making the products or simply that even thought that market is doing OK doesn't mean it spreads to the rest of the economy.

P. Diddy says gas prices are too high...even for him

yes even if you have money coming out of the anus, you are still effect by high gas prices



producer, record mogul, and rapper Sean "puff daddy, P. Diddy, Diddy, Puffy, I hope he hasn't changed his name again" Combs has release the above video joking about the fact that he has to fly a commerical plane because of high gas prices.


a lot of people are mocking him for this video but hey maybe we will be looky and an OPEC nation will see this and being fans of bad boy records they may lower the price of oil.

or they might hate Puffy and raise it just to spite him.