Despite all of the flying crap in the general direction of Wall Street lately, I thought that it didn’t affect me.
Well, it didn’t … that is, until Wachovia decided to sellout to Citigroup:
http://www.wachovia.com/inside/page/0,,134_307%5E1803,00.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/business/30bank.html?ref=us
I’ve always liked banking with Wachovia ever since I switched to them from 5/3 since I moved down here, and I’ve always despised Citibank because they constantly fill my mailbox with offers to loan me money at ridiculous interest rates, so at this point I’m not really sure what I’ll do. At this point, Sara and I both still have separate accounts and will probably merge them eventually, but we really hadn’t been planning on doing that until we do some debt reduction and credit repair on both sides. Now, who knows???
I really haven’t read much into exactly why all of these financial institutions are going poop up lately, but anybody else feel like the whole financial market collapsing around here has taken on a snowball effect?! If only Canada weren’t so cold, and had its own Disney World…
The short answer: they borrowed more than they could pay for and shoved their debts off onto their customers who ALSO borrowed more than the could pay for. And since the money they borrowed was from other banks, when one fails, others are sure to follow because they can’t pay THEIR debt.