There's no way react to the banking trouble that occurred this past year without shaking our heads in disbelief. The crazy banking news just kept rolling in as one century-old firm after another collapsed, was bailed out by the government, or purchased by another existing bank. The bad news started with investment banks and found its way into commercial banks. Which one stands out as the most unbelievable circumstance?
So who's gonna bail the US Govt out? China? Japan? Where is the restart button?
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i think that it's safe to say the lehman was the most shocking. there have been rumbles about bear for a while so that's nothing that is as outlandish as lehman...even though both are really insane.
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A tie between Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch. I was so shocked by what happened to Lehman Bros, but then when I heard about Merrill Lynch I was like "WHAT IS GOING ON???"
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How about the fact that there was an easy way to AVOID all this: NOT LIGHTENING CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS FOR MORTGAGES? That's the most shocking thing to me. The fact that, if it weren't for the greed of people wanting to keep up with the Joneses and have bigger houses, we wouldn't be in this mess is appalling.
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I don't know if I'd say, "no bank is too big to fail." Some of the smaller regionals, and many of the little players focus on mortgages went under. National City was going to go under without help, but were bought out.
I'd say WaMu being a forced sale to JPM was more amazing than Citi. Citi just had their papers backed by the gov'ment, like the FDIC does to depositors.
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