Look at this footnote in their FULL-YEAR 2008 earnings release dated 1/15/2009:

(b) JPMorgan Chase acquired the banking operations of Washington Mutual Bank for $1.9 billion. The fair value of the net assets acquired exceeded the purchase price which resulted in negative goodwill.
In accordance with SFAS 141, nonfinancial assets that are not held-for-sale were written down against that negative goodwill. The negative goodwill that remained after writing down nonfinancial assets was
recognized as an extraordinary gain.

Abraham Lincoln (attributed): “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

It’s that simple folks – FDIC/JPM wants you to believe all was well with the fire-sale of WAMU but the truth is: The FDIC has no idea what they conveyed to JPM and as a result has recently resorted to claims of mismanagement and underfunding in an attempt to “thump their chest in public” even though their own sister agency (OTS) was in the WAMU books for months and said WAMU was well capitalized. And JPM while on one hand says (in public mind you) they paid fair value for the assets of WAMU and their purchase of WAMU brought great relief to JPM and its shareholders (you’d have to read JPM’s Shareholders PR), JPM contradicts itself in its own pleadings to the court saying that if there is a reversal of sorts – JPM stands to lose Billions (with an s) not 1.9 Billion…

I hope and hope for a jury trial – the good thing about Bankruptcy court is that they follow the the letter of the law to a “T”. We may not get triple damages but Paulson, Bair and Dimon will be severely damaged by their own words and actions – God Bless America.

You get stopped for drunk driving. The cops impound your car, which they have a legal right to do. Then they confiscate yoru bank accounts. Then they take your wife’s car. Then they take your children. Then… they hold a government auction and sell your car for peanuts and throw in all of the stuff they had no right taking.

There’s a lot more to it that you can read about at http://wamustory.com. But seriously, this lawsuit has little to do with the bank failure and much to do with the FDIC breaking a multitude of their own rules and regulations, including fraudulent tranfers of money and assets from the holding company to ensure JPM stayed solvent.

Just because someone is frustrated with the crooks on wall street doesn’t make it ok for agencies like the FDIC to rape and pillage as they break laws in a scorched Earth like liquidation firesale.

And for the record, WaMu was trying to sell itself… and the FDIC went behind their back and told JPM they were going to seize the bank and instead of allowing WaMu to sell the banks, thus salvaging the bondholders and shareholders, they handed JPM the whole deal for peanuts… which functioned as a wonderful little wipeout of the middle class.

Don’t take my word for any of this… do your own research. http://Wamustory.com is a great place to start.

I suppose everyone thinks that getting their hands on taxpayer money is now an entitlement.

Yeah, sure everyone prospered until the wheels came off. So everyone wants to pin it on Bush, and everyone was so, so happy while BC was in office.

Now they get to pay.