"Good morning! While you were sleeping, your bank failed!!" Not exactly the news I imagined waking up to yesterday, but yes, I'm a Washington Mutual customer, and yes, WaMu went tits up while I slept. Imagine my delight. OK, so I understand that my vast financial empire is still insured by the feds (pardon me if I'm overflowing with confidence on this count), but what in the Hell is going on here? I may have been a history major, and I'm no financial whiz (just ask my ex-wife), but even I can figure out when things are completely FUBAR.
Am I going to have a retirement? Perhaps it's too early to begin to panic, but this is no mere academic exercise for me. Under normal actuarial projections, my retirement is less than 20 years away...and I absolutely wonder what retirement will look like for me, or even if I'll be able to afford to retire. I understand the theory and reality of economic cycles, but what I don't get is how Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © can seriously be pushing a solution to a problem created by lack of oversight and supervision resulting from Republican deregulation. In other words, the foxes are guarding the henhouse? Anyone else see a problem here??
Oh, but things will be all better once we hand Hank Paulson $700 billion and the absolute impunity to do with it as he sees fit? Yippi-ki-yay!!
Man, I do NOT want to speak my golden years working as a greeter at a WalMart....
