WaMu Closed and Sold

Another big bank goes boom:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A rescue for the U.S. financial system unraveled on Thursday amid accusations Republican presidential candidate John McCain scuppered the deal, and Washington Mutual was closed by U.S. authorities and its assets sold in America’s biggest ever bank failure.

As negotiations over an unprecedented $700 billion bailout to restore credit markets degenerated into chaos, the largest U.S. savings and loan bank was taken over by authorities and its deposits auctioned off. U.S. stock futures fell by more than 1 percent.

The third-largest U.S. bank JPMorgan Chase & Co said it bought the deposits of Washington Mutual Inc, which has seen its stock price virtually wiped out because of massive amounts of bad mortgages. The government said there would be no impact on WaMu’s depositors and customers. JPMorgan said it would be business as usual on Friday morning.

Notice the way Reuters wrote that story - blaming McCain for the financial mess before getting to the actual story about WAMU. No bias there.

UPDATE: WAMU Recognized as Top Diverse Employer...Again

That's the press release that was issued by WAMU right before they failed. Do you think there's any connection?

UPDATE 2: WaMu's chief gets $20 million for 17 days work. I would have done for half that much.