A Hard Rain Is Gonna Fall

Its hard to imagine that the stock market will react favorably to Washington Mutual crumbling and the news that there is no immediate plan of action to fix the financial crisis.

My guess would be that any gains from Thursday's market will be lost today, but I could be wrong. Some kind of small good news might lightly offset the downward trends.

So here's the good news. It is Friday. The weekend has graciously arrived. Its raining here and its cool so that adds to the distress of the world's shaky condition but rain is an enrichment. I will put on my rain gear and bike to work today and its going to be great, earthy, elemental.

Instead of worrying about how low your mutual funds are heading, this weekend do at least one thing that will save you some dough. Fix that front door, weather strip it, bust out that caulk gun and fix that spot where cold air is going to take away a small fraction of your hard earned money. Turn this economic crap storm into a motivating plan of personal action. Why not......

Reuters: Index futures point to lower Wall Street open

The U.S. authorities shut down Washington Mutual, the largest U.S. savings and loan bank, and sold its assets.

Reuters: WaMu is largest U.S. bank failure

Washington Mutual Inc was closed by the U.S. government in by far the largest failure of a U.S. bank, and its banking assets were sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co for $1.9 billion.

Washington Mutual, the largest U.S. savings and loan, has been one of the lenders hardest hit by the nation's housing bust and credit crisis, and had already suffered from soaring mortgage losses.