The WSJ today reports that U.S. savers have pulled $16.7 billion in deposits from Washington Mutual in the last two weeks, and that's a big number.
The bigger, more surprising number is that WaMu still had $145 billion or so of investor deposits as of its failure last night. $145 billion.
The ability of U.S. consumers to ignore really bad potential outcomes is a head scratcher. Yes, this failure was very orderly. It could have been much worse. anybody with access to a computer or a newspaper could have see it coming.
Had it been worse, the owners, or ex-owners in the event of deposits being over $100 k, would have been screaming at the government for protection. They probably would have been out of luck since all the federal politicians are very busy with the grandstanding circle jerk that is going on right now.
1 comment:
we will bail out big business and tax the little guy to pay for it but when big business is busy making record gains through questionable practices, nothing comes back to the little guy. i am all for free business and the american way but the govt needs to get some checks and balances in the system. maybe record gains will come with record taxes and some will trickle down to the public to offset things such as this bailout. what about using those taxes to build a border fence? what about the fact that the moon is made of cheese?
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