WaMu

As it happens, I got a new Washington Mutual credit card last week. So I thought this morning I’d head over to the website to see if there was any chance that the bank’s collapse and seizure by the government meant that I’d be in a position to avoid paying for last night’s dinner. No such luck it seems, but I did find this upbeat picture of children playing to be pretty funny. Welcome to JPMorgan Chase, indeed.

I think this is actually sort of good news for the public. The government was able to seize the company, wipe out the shareholders, and basically pass the firm along to JPMorgan Chase without (thus far) needing to dip too deep into the FDIC’s pool of money. That means that the threat of a WaMu failure wiping out the FDIC’s accounts isn’t hanging over our heads anymore and my understanding is that there aren’t other retail banks of WaMu’s size thought to be teetering on the brink at the moment.