23 Replies to "WaMu, what it means to you"

• In2theknight September 25, 2008 (10:01 pm)

  This figures…after hating my last 2 banks, Bank Of America (I could go on for weeks about how many times they’ve lied and screwed me over) & Wachovia, I finally found a bank that I hadn’t had any problems with since I opened an acct 2 years ago. I hope JP doesn’t do anything to rock this relationship.

• Brandon September 25, 2008 (10:02 pm)

  Let’s not start panicking. WAMU the bank is still in operation for depositors and borrowers. Shareholders are left with nothing. Anyone who invested in them and relied on them for retirement income has been shafted by mismanagement. The Feds can bail out Fanny, Freddy and AIG, but an S&L be damned. Another Seattle institution bye bye. Is the Space Needle next?

• Jerald September 25, 2008 (10:06 pm)

  I feel sad, that’s where I deposited my school banking money as a kid. Have one of those metal George Washington money banks somewhere. I think they killed it with the name change. WAMU, how stupid.

  (I know it’s a bit more complex than that, really.)

• Craig September 25, 2008 (10:48 pm)

  I work closely with many WAMU branches for the job I do. WAMU is still waiting to see what the government does. The government may bail WAMU (and other struggling banks) out of dept. If the gov. doesn’t bail them out then they will be up for sale. If they do get sold it will take a year or so to get all the financial mess in order. small changes will be expected but not without proper notice. As for JP Morgan having WAMU’s back. that’s partially true. JP Morgan is just the institution where WAMU gets it’s currency from. Hope this helps you out.

• Brandon September 25, 2008 (11:05 pm)

  Craig, the FDIC seized WAMU and sold the assets to JPM. There is NO bailout. There are not for sale. The deposit ratio dropped too low for regulatory comfort, they stepped in and took over the company and then sold the assets. JPM did not buy them from shareholders, they bought from the FDIC. A free ticket so to speak, and the shareholders are left with nothing. A far cry from the buyout offer of just a week ago that would have at least netted $2-4 per share. JPM got a fire sale. IMHO the Gov. blinked, and previous owners of WM got stiffed. Thank you Kerry, at least you got out before the killing.
  From the Wall St. Journal:

  “J.P. Morgan agreed to pay $1.9 billion to the government for WaMu’s banking operations and will assume the loan portfolio of the thrift, which has $307 billion in assets. The full cost to J.P. Morgan will be much higher, because it plans to write down about $31 billion of the bad loans and raise $8 billion in new capital. All WaMu depositors will have access to their cash, but holders of more than $30 billion in debt and preferred stock will likely see little if any recovery.”

  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122238415586576687.html?mod=testMod

• Craig September 25, 2008 (11:24 pm)

  My appologies!! I decided to go to west seattle blog first before I turned on the news. Thank you for correcting me.

• WSB September 26, 2008 (2:42 am)

  I’ve been sitting here watching tv while working for the past few hours and it was pointed out that some components of WaMu … like, its debt … were not purchased and will be administered by the feds, fwiw.

• Magpie September 26, 2008 (6:01 am)

  This is very sad for many Wash St residents who have known WAMU for their whole lives. They are going to close a large number (at least 10 percent) of WAMU branches which will mean that there will be more layoffs in Washington. Another thing is the stock is basically gone and stockholders (who were still left) lost their money (which means that many WAMU employees probably got screwed big time in this if they were holding on or if they didn’t diversify their 401ks and still had a lot of WAMU stock in them or had a lot invested in the employee stock purchase plan.) You can only take a 3k per year loss on your taxes..this whole thing really sucks for them.

  Since WAMU changed so much over the past several years, my comment has been, “Washington Mutual, no longer a friend of the family”. I work in a finanancial institution and all I can say is that we have been getting literally buckets of money in from WAMU customers looking for a safe haven for their money.

  It will be interesting if the FBI finds anything to go after Kerry Killinger for. I’m sure there are some WAMU employees who would like to see if voodoo dolls really work.

• Admiral Janeway September 26, 2008 (6:58 am)

  A few years ago I was on jury duty with a WAMU employee. She told me that management was very worried about the housing bubble in California popping. WAMU not only financed home buyers. They made loans to builders and developers as well. To paraphrase her words, it’s going to be long and nasty.

• alkibeachgal September 26, 2008 (7:24 am)

  Wamu Celebrated it’s 118th birthday yesterday and received a present from the the federal regulators, JP Morgan Chase.
  2 months ago, WAMU had a strong enough deposit base to keep it’s doors open and fix what was broken, but with recent Media coverage, which reported on speculations and gave ill advice to the public it created a run on the bank. WAMU lost BILLIONS with-in a 10- day period. The actors (News Anchors) are handed scripts on what to report to the public, and they sound so creditable, people believe what they say and only hear 7% of the story. Pulling your money out of WAMU created another Seattle Icon to disappear.

• dhguat September 26, 2008 (7:31 am)

  This is really tragic. When I moved here in the 1979 there were many successful local companies: Rainier Bank, Eddie Bauer, The Bon, Frederick & Nelson, Safeco and Washington Mutual.

  Slowly, local companies have lost out to the big fish on the east coast.

  I thought WaMu had $50 billion in liquid assets and were going to weather this. How can a company w/ $50 billion be purchased for $2 Billion?

• ptr September 26, 2008 (8:03 am)

  Very, very sad. Like In2theknight, WAMU was the only bank that I’ve ever liked:

  1) their employees are usually very kind and helpful (and actually seem happy to work there)
  2) I didn’t feel like I was always getting nickel and dimed by ridiculous fees (uhh hum…f.u. B of A)
  3) they actually started giving a decent interest rate (~3%) on their savings accounts.

  J.P. Morgan and Chase, if you’re reading this (and I know you are), don’t turn WAMU into another impersonal corporate beast (uhh hum…f.u. B of A).

• In2theknight September 26, 2008 (8:52 am)

  ptr, how about you and I start a campaign to have the name changed from Bank to Bane of America? That suites them a bit more.

• forrest (with 2 Rs) September 26, 2008 (9:02 am)

  WSB, I believe that the Feds hold some of the debt of WaMu, but the bulk of its mortgages were actually shipped off to JPM as part of the deal, according to the shareholder presentation JPM had yesterday.

  I believe this is the link to where I found the presentation’s Powerpoint file.

• andrea September 26, 2008 (10:08 am)

  awww man, I loved WaMu! Yea, the new name sucked as did the whole wooohooo campaign, but they were the best bank around and yes very nice to deal with. I’ve had my savings account with them since I was 2 years old (my dad’s name is still on the account & I’m married!). I have a very good friend that works at WaMu corporate, and she was told just last night that they were not too hold out too much hope for their jobs, and that all of her retirement after 8 years of employment was gone. How very very sad and so unnecessary.

• miws September 26, 2008 (10:29 am)

  I don’t have a huge problem with the name change to WAMU, myself. 15 plus years ago, I worked in the parking garage of a building downtown that WAMU had a large presence in. Even back then, the employees referred to it as WAMU.

  .

  My one concern is, even though it’s said that the Washington Mutual/WAMU name won’t change, how long until JPMC actually does change it. B of A sais the same thing about Seafirst, but they eventually changed the name.

  .

  I did the school banking thing with Washington Mutual back in the 60’s. Had a savings acct in the mid ’70’s, then, out of convenience of location downtown at the time, plus it was the bank my paychecks were drawn on at the time, I switched to Seattle Trust (Key Bank) in late ’77 or early ’78.

  .

  About 9 years ago now, I switched back to WAMU, because I found myself using their ATM at Thriftway most of the time, plus they were still locally owned, and Key was issuing only 20 dollar bills in their ATMs, much to my chagrin, WAMU started doing the same, several years later.

  .

  I’ve figured for several years now, that if WAMU did something to really piss off this “little guy” with his measely (sp) checking acct, I’d switch to a Credit Union (BECU?).

  .

  Mike

• LS September 26, 2008 (12:16 pm)

  What really killed WaMu was all the customers going in and taking out their deposits. Doing that caused the bank’s assets to drop to a point where the feds felt it was necessary to take action. Honestly, if you don’t have more than $100k in deposits – then you don’t have to worry about it. I had less than $100k in Indymac when the FDIC took them over, and the only problem getting my money out afterwards was that it took them 5 biz days to mail the check, rather than 2.

  Everyone running in to take out their money was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

• beef September 26, 2008 (12:49 pm)

  well maybe they will fix their online banking so you can actually use the search function to find old transactions. Seriously, it’s been like that for 3-4 years.

• Brandon September 26, 2008 (1:00 pm)

  The Gov. bailout this weekend could have probably staved off the collectors. Too bad the FDIC doesn’t take into account the employee’s of these institutions when they wipe out their stock/retirement funds, and then sell it cheap on the dollar to a fire sale predator. All they seem to care about is that the FDIC till didn’t get tapped. Which is good for taxpayers until the unemployed show up with no nest eggs that were wiped out by poor judgement. Why isn’t Killinger getting vilified like another Seatle leper, Howard Shultz? Killinger has certainly earned it…

• alkibeachgal September 26, 2008 (8:30 pm)

  16.7 billion withdrawn from consumer accounts in 10 days. Thank you KIRO, KING,KOMO, Q13, CNN, Cnbc, and Suzie Orman for creating a mass histeria. They would be have been fine with out your uneeded help.

• John September 27, 2008 (10:39 pm)

  In response to a couple of posts, as bad as I feel for people who have lost their entire retirement savings because it was all or mostly invested in WAMU, please – everybody, diversify no matter what unless you know you’re gambling and can afford it (which 90%+ or so of us can’t).
  .
  There are always lots of Enron’s and WAMU’s and Arthur Anderson’s out there and they’re rarely predictable. We’ve been warned over and over about too many eggs in the same retirement basket.
  .
  As an aside, I genuinely saw Countrywide’s demise years ago because of the amount of Countrywide foreclosures in our condo building and I expected a bloody mess some day in banking – but even for me the scale has left me in awe. Despite intermittent interests in tracking stocks over the years and tons of reading on investing and pretty good math skills, I finally realized that I couldn’t outpredict the market as even most of the experts couldn’t either. So I too lost money in my mutual funds this year because almost all buy some bank/financial sector stocks, but I can’t take a bath for lack of diversification.
  .
  In all seriousness, does anybody have investment ideas that would avoid leaving money out for greedy overpaid execs? I’d love to be out of the market as I know we’re all being partially siphoned off by these greedy buggers.

• Brandon September 27, 2008 (11:55 pm)

  The people who should have the wrath directed at them is also the Board of Directors. They hire CEO’s, determine salary, and review performance. If good CEO’s were a dime a dozen, then they would be cheap to come by. But for a F-500 co., its pretty competitive to hire a cheap manager to run such large companies. Again, BOD’s are the problem here who give free rides to these executives. Re; diversification, some employees can’t diverse their stock options paid as bonuses or retirement, so they are stuck with their losses. FDIC doesn’t give a damn about them. This bank should have been saved (from itself) but the BOD and FDIC didn’t care enough.
  T-Bills are your safest investment with Uncle Sam as your CEO. There are hundreds of companies without “Greedy execs”, but few that reach their goals without agressive and well compensated management. There is a fine line and I find stock options and prices targets a reasonable incentive for shareholder value. But again, BOD’s run the show when it comes to that.

• yeldsy13 October 11, 2008 (7:56 am)

  And now the treasury decides to invest in major U.S. banks … I’m sorry but smells rotten in Washington and I hope that there is a class action lawsuit for what they have done to the shareholders of WAMU.

  GG JP for getting such an awesome deal …

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