Damn. Just... damn.

I have a friend who works for WaMu. I hope he still has a job.

In the mortgage industry, this was no surprise. They were the pioneers of reverse mortgages, which impacted their reserve requirements. They were tres, tres risky!

The actual downfall was the run on deposits. Customers withdrew $15 BILLION dollars from WaMu in recent weeks. The FDIC did what it needed to...covered their ass. The losers are the shareholders.

As far as JPM/Chase is concerned, it's business as usual, but maybe not for their mortgage and commercial arm.

It seems to be that way. Apparently, wherever Chase holds a large stake in the commercial banking (like here in NYC, where in some neighborhoods, there's a Chase on each major corner), a majority of the WaMu branches are going to close.

I read that WaMu prided itself on making mortgages available to low-income customers. That's all well and good, but the mortgages have to be legit. If you make $25,000 a year, you have no business buying a $400K house. :mad:

JP Morgan is the firm my employer chose for us for our new retirement plan investment options. I hope this is a sign that they are doing ok and will continue to do ok.

Legislation requires they close in order to prevent monopolies. In WaMu's case, they don't have a majority overlap in major markets because JPM doesn't have a huge presence on the west coast.

JPM had a solid trust and fiduciary division. If I remember right, they kept Bank One's people senior management to run it. When I worked for B1, I had most of my investments there.

Jamie Dimon is building his empire. It was very well known in the media that his goal was to be BIGGER than Citi to get back at Sandy Weil for firing him. So, he succeeded in making JPM the second largest in the US behind BofA. Knowing Dimon's ego, he won't stop until he is the largest.

Wouldn't this make Chase a great long-term investment because of the growth that they will experience?

Well, I'm sorry I sold all of my stock in 2002. Yes, Chase is considered a good conservative long-term investment. You won't feel like you won the lottery, but you will receive a descent return.