Whoah. The government just seized WaMu and sold it to J.P. Morgan. They usually wait until Friday evening to do that sort of thing.

Woah. I am more and more glad that the bank I met with yesterday was JPMorgan Chase.

Whoa.

I knew they'd pay for getting rid of the Rodeo Grannies.

Dag, you guys -- I'm watching the Daily Show from the other night, and this shit isn't even funny, it's so scary.

I guess now JP Morgan has all of my money.

This is all doubly weird because we have a lot of clients in this industry (none of the ones who've been making the big headlines thus far, for the most part) so I keep speculating about the various business implications of all this, beyond the general (and now personal) economy stuff.

Damn. Does this mean we're screwed? Or really screwed?

China banks told to halt lending to US banks-SCMP

But... but... but how will we pay for our wars? And our tax cuts?

BEIJING, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Chinese regulators have told domestic banks to stop interbank lending to U.S. financial institutions to prevent possible losses during the financial crisis, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.

The Hong Kong newspaper cited unidentified industry sources as saying the instruction from the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) applied to interbank lending of all currencies to U.S. banks but not to banks from other countries.

"The decree appears to be Beijing's first attempt to erect defences against the deepening U.S. financial meltdown after the mainland's major lenders reported billions of U.S. dollars in exposure to the credit crisis," the SCMP said.

A spokesman for the CBRC had no immediate comment. (Reporting by Alan Wheatley and Langi Chiang; editing by Ken Wills)

It'd be funny if it were true. For everyone but us USA-ians, that is....

This is very cool, but hard to explain....

(It takes to about the 24 second mark to understand what's coming. It begins in earnest at about 42 seconds.)

eta: I suppose a link would be good....

[link]

I'll say.

The ingenuity of government workers, or something: about a month ago we had a leak at work just outside my cubicle. When they took down the ceiling tiles, we discovered this: [link]

Yes, that's a vintage Lime Crush can, circa 1980. Apparently they put them up there to catch drips from whatever they used to seal the pipes. Someone told me that there are a lot of them hidden in the ceiling. Craxy!

Dag, you guys -- I'm watching the Daily Show from the other night, and this shit isn't even funny, it's so scary.

You think last night's was scary...