Comments on: Financial Earthquake May Be Coming This Weekend: Lehman and Washington Mutual

By: elrod

elrod — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 05:44:34 +0000

Nice analysis, Patrick.

I have no idea how much this will reverberate through the economy. It seems a continuation of a trend already begun a year ago, with major financial institutions biting the dust and property values continuing to plummet.

I though the government had already decided to bail out LB by the way.

By: nepr

nepr — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 04:48:36 +0000

Thanks, for this.

I can't see why anyone in govt would hesitate to “bail out” LB. The arguments against it seem nebulous and abstract to me.

By: FrequentPoster

FrequentPoster — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 00:29:26 +0000

I live in Seattle, and yesterday I withdrew $80,000 from Washington Mutual and put it in a bank a block away. I'm not the only one who did that.

By: pacatrue

pacatrue — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 23:01:02 +0000

Good article and I agree with almost all of it, including sharing the blame between parties. I also agree that many of these bail-outs, particularly of Fannie and Freddie, are necessary. They are too big to fail. However, one thing I'd like to see going forward is a way to avoid the current scenario where profits go to the shareholders and losses go to the tax payer.