Sex & Politics

FDIC seized WaMu today and to avoid having to pay depositors, sold it off in a bidding process that hands JPMorgan all of its banking assets. Oh and this is officially the largest bank failure in US history. From CNN:

PMorgan Chase acquired the banking assets of Washington Mutual late Thursday after the troubled thrift was seized by federal regulators, marking the biggest bank failure in the nation’s history and the latest stunning development in the ongoing credit crisis.

Under the deal, JPMorgan Chase will acquire all the banking operations of WaMu, including $307 billion in assets and $188 billion in deposits.

In exchange, JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) will pay approximately $1.9 billion to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Separately, JPMorgan announced plans to raise $8 billion in additional capital through the sale of stock as part of the deal.

The acquisition is JPMorgan Chase’s second major purchase this year following the mid-March acquisition of investment bank Bear Stearns, a deal that was also engineered by the government.

Yeah.

Add that to the bailout deal that looks like it’s not gonna happen and I say we will have some jittery markets come the morn…to say the least.