Wow, amid the rumors of recession, rising gas prices and general freaking out in the US, WAMU is attempting to auction itself off to the highest bidder.  Apparently, WAMU has been plagued with huge mortgage losses and many in the know have expected this to happen for a while.  WAMU has brought Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on board to attempt a sale to possible buyers such as Citigroup, HSBC Holdings, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo - according to buzz online.

Ok, so how does Washington Mutual, the largest US savings and loan bank go about falling so far?  Are mortgage losses that bad? An online source says that WAMU may, “in a worst case scenario, … face the same fate as mortgage lender IndyMac Bancorp, which regulators seized in July.”

WOW! More info: “Washington Mutual has lost $6.3 billion in the last three quarters and was downgraded to junk status by Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s. The bank has projected $19 billion of mortgage losses until 2011.”  DOUBLE WOW.  It’s hard for me to fathom how this happens, but apparently, they are losing their shirt, as it were.

I have a close friend working for WAMU and I’m slightly concerned for her and her boyfriend at this point.  What happens to the jobs when a company is auctioned off like this?  I’m assuming that perhaps WAMU should have been cutting some costs somewhere…but perhaps that’s just a drop in the bucket as they say?

And I wonder what this will do to the business market as a whole.  Something as awesome as a HUGE WELL-KNOWN bank crashing and burning has GOT to cause some major waves.  How does this effect the people who bank at WAMU?  I personally, left WAMU 7 years ago because I absolutely hated dealing with their customer service people, branch people and the slew of stupid, extra fees they tried to make me pay…

Interesting.  It will be even more interesting to watch the fall out.  Maybe my friends need to start looking for new jobs?

Washington Mutual ended June with $309.7 billion of assets and 2,239 branches.

If you haven’t heard yet, there was a bit of a problem with the release of the second coming of the iPhone. The biggy being the fact that apparently AT&T’s servers crashed. With Apple requiring that the iPhone be activated in store, this was a MAJOR line holder upper! Because the new 3G iPhone is subsidized by carriers and with the plan to get all new iPhone owners on a signed, well, PLAN (aka contract), Apple wanted all phones activated in store. However, with major issues in the servers and the crash of iTunes, that plan was abandoned, allowing customers to proceed with the final activation at home.

Unfortunately, that didn’t work much better. Customers everywhere were posting on forums asking, ‘what am I doing wrong?!’ when the problem wasn’t with them but with the servers.

Another problem came with CURRENT iPhone users - an upgrade to the iPhone operating system was launched at the same time, moving up the the 2.0 model (a huge 225MB!), but that proved to be a problem as well. Unfortunately, current iPhone users who tried to upgrade found their phone unusable for a time as the operating system could not be fully installed.

This user, fortunately, decided to WAIT on upgrading anything and stayed completely away from iTunes over the weekend.

Now, with the initial release in the past, Apple has gone on to sell over 1 million units. So, I think it’s safe to say that the screw up at the Friday release has not turned many people away from one of the best pieces of consumer technology to come along for quite a while.

The new iPhone packs a nice array of new features:

• 3G technology, meaning it transmits data twice as fast
• Built in GPS
• iPhone 2.0 software with support for MS Exchange ActiveSync
• The ability to run third-party applications, something completely missing from the first generation

Plus, with Apple showing that the iPhone is a priority in terms of updates (several of which greatly improved upon the original a year ago), there are LOTS more things that will be coming for the iPhone - something unheard of for all other cell phones.

But the iPhone really isn’t just a cell phone - it’s a portable computer that allows you to make calls and to me, it is the absolute BEST phone/computer available.

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