John Gordon

Well, as you all should know by now, JP Morgan Chase just bought out my employer of 6 1/2 years, Washington Mutual Bank. I, for one, welcome our JP Morgan Overlords. :-)

Attached to this post is the presentation JP Morgan put together outlining their reasoning for the buyout. One highlight is that they are writing down $30 billion in losses from Wamu's portfolio up front. Funny, but didn't the Wamu execs say it would only be $19 billion?

Here's an interesting article questioning the timing of the Fed's seizure of Wamu. The article says the seizure was so sudden that Alan Fishman, CEO of Wamu for all of 3 weeks (and getting to keep his $7 million sign-on bonus plus the $11 million severance package), was in mid-flight between New York and Seattle when it happened. My question is, what possible reason could they have had to rush things so quick? Uh, that's rhetorical, son.....rhetorical.

Me? I'll be fine. I'm just reminded of the Chinese saying (curse?): "May you live in interesting times." I guess we all are now.