Congressman William Jefferson, D-LA, recommends wrapping each $10,000 in aluminum foil and placing in frozen food containers.
Posted on 09/26/2008 4:34:48 PM PDT by metmom
Millions of Washington Mutual customers woke up Friday morning fearing that their life savings, checking accounts and mortgages were in danger, after federal regulators seized the bank’s assets and sold them in a fire sale Thursday night.
Despite assurances by the federal government that it guarantees deposits of up to $100,000, customers descended upon bank branches to yank out their money on Friday, hoping it was still there.
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Congressman William Jefferson, D-LA, recommends wrapping each $10,000 in aluminum foil and placing in frozen food containers.
We have some CDs as well, with a bank not associated with any of this mess.
We’re fortunate in that we just have living expenses. We don’t have any indebtedness, no mortgage, no car payments. We have what we can afford and no more.
I know some people think that that’s foolish because you can play financial games with interest rates and tax deductions and all, but for what we have, it just isn’t worth the effort for a few dollars here and there.
At least no one can foreclose on our home.
I had fire in mind, not federal agents!
>> We’re fortunate in that we just have living expenses. We don’t have any indebtedness, no mortgage, no car payments. We have what we can afford and no more.
Ditto. God has blessed us with enough to live on, and we have always lived within our means. Our only “debt” is whatever we run up on the charge card during the month; we pay it in full each billing cycle.
Over the last ten years we have been looked on with amusement and pity by some of our friends who invested in risky ventures (real estate mostly) for high returns, while we played it safe. To tell the truth, there were times when I did feel like a chump. But each time we discussed it, we concluded that gambling that way was just not right. Both of us were brought up that living within your means is not only wise, but good.
It could be that the outcome of this financial crisis is to harm those like us who saved and acted responsibly. I hope not; however, life sometimes isn’t fair.
Even if we end up losing from inflation and dollar devaluation, Mrs. Tick and I can still sleep at night and not worry that we have overextended ourselves, or feel bad that we borrowed what we could not repay and made ourselves a drag on the economy. What value does one put on being able to sleep at night and look one’s self in the mirror in the morning? As the commercial goes, it’s “priceless”.
FRegards
Same for us.
Agree 100%.
We have food, clothes, shelter to keep us warm and dry.
Community banks were much different in 1890 than in 1980. At that time (1980) there were prudent regulations in place and tried and true lending priciples dictated by a successfull business model.
When the “gubment” got into the business of ?stimulating? the housing market by infusing artificial money to fund; and inflate; the housing market, failure was clearly in our future. The rider that came with the “gubment” loans was the lender had to also make loans to individuals that would not and could not afford. The second round of “gubment” intervention came in giving Fannie and Freddie the ability to take these toxic loans off the market so NEW money could be infused into the market.
The greedy had a feeding frenzy at the expense of sound banking practices.
Once again Wimpy gets his hamburger and Tuesday never comes.
I’m not blaming Bush, I’m blaming the greedy so and so’s who had $$ for eyes. It started low level and by the time it was apparent that a swindle was going on it was too late to do much about it. Bush did warn of the coming crisis but it fell on deaf ears. No one wants to hear the bad news until it falls on their own doorstep.
Depositors have next to nothing to worry about, although it’s always a good idea to keep under the FDIC limits, and there was no run on our local branch yesterday, but share holders are a different story. It’s gone. There were several suicide threats on the Yahoo WAMU threads and lots of people that were ruined. Many had been speculating that the stock would see a big pop when a bailout came, but that isn’t the way it worked. The bank was cherry picked for value by JPM (the only way they’d consummate the deal) and the shares went to essentially zero. I talked to the local branch manager (being careful to avoid the stock issue) and I can imagine that many company 401Ks are wiped out. Never have more than a few percent in any one company including your own.
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