Government Seizes WaMu and Sells Some Assets

Washington Mutual, the giant lender that came to symbolize the excesses of the mortgage boom, was seized by federal regulators on Thursday night, in what is by far the largest bank failure in American history.

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I would have never thought that one of the largest banks (well a savings and loans) the size of Washington Mutual would be seized by the government and sold off in pieces in a matter of hours. And even more odd, that they sold he best part worth billions of dollars to the company for pennies on the dollar.  I don't understand how the government can take the good parts and sold it off to a company and left sharholders like myself left with all the bad part and now stock that is now absolutley worthless.  Does seem very fair in the context of business.

I hope someone takes a good hard look at this and find that the government acted inappropiately and restore some sense of fairness in american business.

Congressman Ron Paul lectures Bernanke on the flaws of the bailout plan and the hazard of the attempt to fix prices versus letting them correct naturally in the free market at the Congressional Hearing today (9/24/08). Ron also questions Bernanke's authority and constitutionality of using the printing press to generate all this extra money needed for the bailout.

In order to streamline the application process for students to Pacific this year, us in enrollment are adding a BIG fancy application button on the homepage.  (originally was going to be in the corner and I was like "Humm ...you know I can put it front and center?")

I know to most flash guru's this is 2nd grade work,  but you have to understand how large organization structures works and how long it even took me to be able to even update the flash file and try to figure out what the original 3rd party vendor did. So after about a couple of months of twisting crazy actionscript around and such This is what I came up with...

I won't be implementing the fading image for now as it was just a proof of concept more than anything. anyways, just posting here to remind myslef of when and how I did this :-)

Its amazing the random movies you find on TV late at night or in your Netflix queue.

A couple worth mentioning are:

August Rush

Not really sure how this movie ended up on my netflix's queue, but this was definintely a movie that I enjoyed watching. If you liked Serendipity, you shoudl love this movie.

and

ESL - English as a second Language

Not sure how to describe this so I'll steal the IMDB's  synopsis:

"Bolivar De La Cruz, with a baby on the way, has just made the treacherous journey over the border from Mexico to Los Angeles, California, home of the beautiful and restless Lola Sara, whose parents made the same journey some twenty years ago. Now two people from very different sides of the same culture find themselves on a collision course with the events that will change their lives forever."

I am not a fan of minority pseudo docu-dramas, but this one seem somewhat engaging. The lives of two mexican immigrants and how life turns their lives in circles. I like movies that have a tendency to remind us that llife is rather random and in some way we have very little control over its outcome, but given those odds, to still try make you life better.  

and finally

10 items or less

I was about to go to sleep and noticed that my Media Center PC recorded this movie. I was like "whatthe heck... I'll watch it" and I am so glad that I did. Another genre of movie I love is the exposure of hollywood and all its smokes and mirrors and how actors and actresses are just people like the rest of us and how they have the some of the same issues and problems we all face. Morgan Freeman and Paz Vega were great. I love her character as a shoot from the hip, no-none sense women working as a grocery teller. 

but not so much if you are an insurance or mortgage company.

Government steps in again, bails out AIG with $85B
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080917/aig.html

Is Washington Mutual the Next to Fall?
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/sep2008/db20080916_498821.htm?campaign_id=yhoo

Lehman unloads it banking divisions to Barclays
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080917/lehman_barclays_deal.html

Classic. skit of Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin.

a MILF and a FLIRG (First Lady is really gay)

humm.... I wonder who actually coined that phrase. That would an interesting experiment in Viral marketing... creating work that people start searching for looking for an answer...

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/palin-hillary-open/656281/

An interesting photo essay on the changing lifestyle of the college experience, in particular the college dorm room from the 1950 to today.

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1838306,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

CERN will make the first attempt to circulate a beam in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). But don't woory as many reports say it will not trigger a blackhole and suck the Earth into itself. (well I hope anyways...)

But you tech nerds, check out the news on Google as even they are making it a big deal today!

http://www.google.com/search?q=Large+Hadron+Collider&hl=en

What's the big about this? Read Wired's blog article on the subject.

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/the-bosons-that.html

Found this interesting cool article from the LA times back in 1998 of my sister Florence when she was on the Track and field team for UC Irvine.. 

I love the opening lines.

"UC Irvine’s Florence Sterni is deceptive.

Other sprinters must look at her and think, no sweat. At a shade taller than 5 feet, by her count, Sterni just doesn’t look threatening in such power-and-muscle events like the 100 and 200 meters."

Here's a link to the full article.
http://articles.latimes.com/1998/may/20/sports/sp-51770

For anyone that thinks that life is too intimidating, this is a must article to read.