Cratering, it's just cratering, I tell you

[tangerinpenguin]

Oh my. It seems the bank with my checking account has failedSo, WaMu got acquired. That's not exactly a shock; they've been on fumes for a while now, and it's widely accepted that they've been trying to recruit a proper suitor for at least a couple weeks. Tonight, though, their consumer banking business was apparently snapped up by JP Morgan/

Comments

[cellio]

I've been wondering how long my non-megabank (Dollar) will hold out before being sucked up...

WaMu holds our mortgage, so I assume we'll be receiving a letter but not in time for the next payment. I also assume that they have well-oiled procedures for this stuff and that I don't need to do anything different until told to.

[ohsochewy]

Hey, would you be available for a phone or skype interview sometime this weekend to talk about this? I'm in a journalism class, and our first assignment is a daily/breaking news thing that needs a bunch of sources, so talking a little about this and then localizing it to my area would be a good story. Nothing fancy, just 10 minutes at the most of sort of first reactions, where do you go from here, etc.

Please e-mail me at rhodesbrooks at gmail dot commmm. Thanks so much!

[captain_squid]

...because markets with lots of players and low barriers to entry are apparently for chumps...

This bit struck me as odd, if only because I've just finished reading this WaPo article talking about smaller local banks thriving in the current environment. (I recommend reading through to page 2, which includes the line: "The inability to borrow -- or to borrow at a reasonable price -- forces banks to make sure they have enough money before they make a loan." Profound, that.)

At any rate, I'm glad to hear that you should be able to get to your monies without too much trouble. And rest assured that when the big interstate banks go in the tank, there will still be a few thousand local guys to fill in the gaps.

[tangerinpenguin]

True. And I'm a bit more concerned about the trend in the airline industry, where the barrier to entry is even larger.

But it's still the case that an awful lot of the mid-to-large players in our economy are consolidating into a very small number of even larger players. If we're talking about being "too big to fail" today, how do you describe the consolidated survivors? And what sort of decision making can we expect that to enable, once we get past the most immediate headlines and there's a bit less spotlight?