WAMU today

i live next door to Washington Mutual Bank, the first big-bank branch to have opened in my southern harlem neighborhood. i have a CD on deposit there, and this seemed — in light of the fact that you don’t get ongoing statements or an ATM card with a CD — a good time to ask for some kind of statement of accounts. i wasn’t sure if they’d be open, this being saturday morning and them being in trouble and all. i wasn’t positive there wouldn’t be lines of screaming depositors outside the bank, clamoring for their cash.

yes to being open and no to the bankrupt hordes: it was business as usual at WAMU this rainy morning, and the young man at the convenience desk was more than happy to print me a copy of my CD’s You Are Here summary (unfortunately without troubling to ask me for ID, but i guess you can’t expect too much when the whole economy is in the toilet and banks are folding in the middle of the night). in fact, the two customers on line ahead of me were actually making deposits. so much for my updated 1929 fantasies of doom.

if evidence of doom is what i wanted, though, there sure are enough hints of it in this statement. i opened this CD in october 2006, and added more funds in november of that year. since that time, the amount on deposit (roughly $35k) has remained constant. interest was deposited, like clockwork, the middle of every month.

and there the symmetry ends. at the beginning of last year the interest payments averaged around $150/month, culminating in a high of $156.70 in june 2007. it was all downhill from there, with payments hovering around ninety-something bucks until this summer when they plunged — PLUNGED, i tell you! — to $48. all this, mind you, while the capital amount (initial deposits plus interest earned) had grown by more than $2,000.

and the financial meltdown is only just getting started.

well, i’m grateful. i’m grateful that i have money in a CD that i am able to leave alone, and i’m grateful that it hasn’t (yet) been wiped out by the shenanigans of wall street. i’m grateful that ordinary citizens understand enough about the way that finance works not to have started a run on this (or any other, so far) bank. i’m grateful that WAMU has been bailed out and that there is still money in the FDIC.

i’m grateful but not complacent. i’m worried, and wondering what i should (or even can) do to protect myself in the event the country slides further down the tubes into bankruptcy. there is no doubt in my mind that if the absolute worst comes to pass and john mccain wins the coming election, that we are all well and completely fucked. on the other hand, despite the trust and respect i hold for barack obama, i’m not convinced that anybody can repair the wreckage that the republicans and their high-rolling buddies have wreaked on our economy, at least not in my lifetime (and i ain’t all that old).

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