JP Morgan Buys Washington Mutual

UPDATE: It now appears that Washington Mutual was actually closed by the government because regulators felt it was unsound and it was then sold to Morgan. According to news reports customers withdrew $ 20 billion in deposits over the past week.

One of the other shoes has dropped as JP Morgan buys out Washington Mutual for a reported price of $ 1.9 billion. It looks to be a pretty good deal for Morgan as WaMu has assets reported to be nearly $ 400 billion in value. The question remains how many debts Morgan took over, but it now seems that Washington Mutual is not in any danger of collapse.

The troubled bank has not had a very good year with a drop in stock prices of 87%.

It remains unclear as to whether the bank will continue to operate under the old name or if some new name will be used. I would expect in time to see the Chase name applied.

But for those with accounts, time to sigh a bit in relief.