Washington Mutual, the nation's largest thrift bank, is looking to be the next victim of the financial meltdown. Their stock ratings have recently been downgraded to "junk" status and stocks were trading at $2.03 a share today. The bank, another entity affected by sour mortgage transactions, was quoted as saying they'll consider any offer for a buyout, even at a loss. Meanwhile, the government was looking for banks that might be interested in assuming WaMu's operations should the bank falter.

Read about it here

Crap. My dad's account for his retirement checks is at WaMu.

It all started going downhill when they changed their official name to "WaMu", instead of the much better and mre professional Washington Mutual.

Also doesn't help that they bought the masters of lending to people with bad credit, Providian

Hail the Free Market.


Multi-Billion Dollar Tax Payer Funded Government Bailout "Loan" in 3.... 2.... 1...

In fairness*, Free Market concepts are those where supply and demand are the primary determination factors of the value of a service or good when competition is allowed to impact prices. The idea is that the costs of things at market are not artificially driven by the dictation of people in power, be it public or private power - in other words something is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it.

So the act of loaning/borrowing money in general works against the free market, because it distorts demand, keeping prices high. Ergo the current problem is not a failure of the free market.

The current troubles in the oil industry, where prices are essentially fixed, works against the concepts of the free market, because the act of competition is removed. So the problems there are not a failure of the free market.

As a fan of the free market and of small government, I have zero issue with the government regulating practices, such as credit and money lending, that work against free market concepts.











*And someone correct me if I have this wrong, because I have done some independent study, but am by no means an economist.