Today, Lehman Brothers went into collapse. Their stock is worth $0.21c now. Just a week ago, it was $20 per share. That's a 99% decrease.
Merrill Lynch "Bullish on America" ceased to exist as Bank of America bought them today. Not a huge issue, except at 5pm Friday they weren't for sale. Apparently Merrill had enough stake in Lehman to be at risk of collapsing today. I'm sure this is a bit of surprise to their employees.
Here in Oregon, it's known that our State Employee Retirement Fund "Yeah we are independent and not taxpayer funded" is extensively invested in both LEH and MER. They guarantee an 8% raise per retiree per year, and are sitting on 6% losses so far this year, so this looks a lot like a 14% taxpayer bailout.
My personal checking is in Washington Mutual, which is known to be "on the ropes". I'm not much worried about that money. It's less than two paychecks. I'm much more worried about my business cash, which is in another small bank. I think I'll move half of it this week, but I don't know where. I can't really hold a bank check, because it's only as good as the bank.
Am I really going to be like Grandma and end up holding gold coins in a burlap bag?
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