Your money was not in some "bank cyberspace." There are very detailed procedures in place regarding dealing with paper checks. Most of these are regulated by the federal gov't, and deal more specifically with checks between different banks.

Even checks written from one account in the bank, to another, typically clear overnight. There are many reasons for this, most of which have to do with basic security procedures & fraud prevention.

These are in place to prevent "kiting," i.e. using multiple accounts to write checks on each and withdraw the money all at once before they clear. I'm not saying you were trying to do this, but other people do, and that's why banks typical have checks clear overnight before funds are available. In your case, since the accounts were drawn on the same bank, and you (allegedly) had plenty of money, you probably should've asked for instant credit on your accounts. But you didn't know that. OOPS! Your bad.

To answer another question: No, I do not work for a commercial bank or an investment bank. I could care less if WaMu goes under, and in fact, I would be gloating over their demise.

I did work for a commercial bank, as a teller, for a few summers while I was in college. It amazed me how stupid people could be when it came to banking... from statements like "How can I be overdrawn? I still have checks left." to getting enraged when the bank would hold an out-of-state check until it cleared (4 days), because it was for $20,000, their account only had $23.14 in it, and had been overdrawn 3 times in the last month...

Sure, banks make a lot of money in fees they charge people.

Are most of the people who get charged lots of fees relatively poor? YES.

Are most, if not all these fees avoidable by using an ounce of common sense and responsibly managing your finances? YES.

Read your freaking account parameters & the statement of fees and charges for your account before you complain about the evil bankers ripping you off. I know there are a lot of words, but come on... it's your money. If you really care, you can make an effort. It might take you 15 minutes tops.

But if WaMu's retail banks are WaMu's strongest asset, isn't it more likely that my business will just be sold to someone else before the bank goes belly up?

Only 1/10th (Or something like that) or so of deposits are kept as cash, per Fed regulations. The rest are loaned out... presumably to people not paying them back.

So, your good money is actually part of the bad. I still don't know if there's reason to panic. I mean, does anyone actually have any numbers? In the thread yesterday, I took a lot of heat for pointing out that people are really just complaining about banks in general, without addressing whether the threats of defaults are real.

What I'd like to see are the amounts of outstanding mortgages currently in default, or at risk of default, versus the cash on hand for WaMu and some other banks.

I don't know if this information is easy to obtain... presumably it's buried within a byzantine assortment of income statements. If people are guessing whether banks are going to fail or not, I'm guessing the banks are not being very forthcoming with the data. Seems like it should be easy to sort out if they were. So, maybe there is reason to panic...

The article makes the interesting point of how the American taxpayer is now the majority owner of AIG.

But, of course, there's no management committee being formed among citizens to oversee AIG; no taxpayers are going to sit on the Board of Directors. Hopefully Bernanke and Paulson do know what their doing, because this is now their monster-love-child.

I don't know how this new bohemoth is going to be structured, but I'm hoping whoever (Treas. or the Fed) inherits the mess will curb some of the riskier derivative based investments which have gotten AIG into trouble. As one of the largest insurers in the world, you'd think AIG would be the model of conservative, sober investments. No sense playing fast and loose when you're that big. But they did, and they're going to get away with it.

Maybe this is the only way to get the risky excesses curbed, because apparently the finance / insurance industry's lobbyists are just too good for the regulators. They have successfully gotten most of the prudent regulations constraining their most indulgent urges rolled back over the last decade.

It's absurd to think Obama is somehow responsible for being branded an "elitist." After having observed how the media reports during election season, it's impossible to think a candidate can actually be responsible for the labels they're branded with... or have any power to dispel those labels once the Corporate News has declared them.

These people never admit when they are wrong; they never admit the issues they focus on are petty, and they rarely, if ever, show a candidate speaking on an issue outside of the occasional soundbite. Otherwise... cracks might appear in the facade of "truth" so meticulously created to keep the sheep "informed."

So Obama will always be "elitist." He has no choice. He'll never get a chance to prove otherwise.

The only hope is that enough Americans can see these absurd labels for what they are and act accordingly, without any help from "above."

If they have recordings of Palin's husband insisting they fire State Trooper Wooten... that's already something, right?

Not really sure what the legislative commission is hoping to accomplish, even if Palin responds to the subpoena, but can't they already shift the burden to her... is there some kind of actual criminal penalty for what she (allegedly) did?

"We have records of your family members urging Wooten should be fired. The burden is now on you to testify you had nothing to do with this, or else."