Personal Finance Week in Review – Waiting for More Hard Truth

Congress Wavers While WaMu Craters 

Mr. ToughMoneyLove has credit crisis fatigue.  Whether you call it a rescue or bailout, the future of the “plan” has been placed squarely in the lap of Congress.  I think the plan treats the symptoms not the cause but at this point, all we can do is wait for the hard truth to come. 

As expected, Washington Mutual failed this week.  I believed failure was imminent because WaMu had suddenly increased the interest rate it was offering on new accounts.  While some bloggers were actively marketing WaMu savings accounts, I was calling for a halt to the promotion of WaMu.  Fortunately for the FDIC, the banking regulators were able to engineer a sale of WaMu retail accounts to another bank.  

WaMu suffered the fate it deserved.  I hope the pain of its failure spread to those in management who were complicit in its reckless lending practices.  My preference would be for more loan origination and underwriting activity to remain with community banks.  Do you remember the days when banks were more interested in community investment than extreme leveraging of collateralized debt obligations?  That system worked, with much lower risk to all of us. 

Personal Finance Carnivals 

Mr. ToughMoneyLove is happy to report that several of his recent posts were selected for various personal finance and money carnivals this week: 

The Carnival of Financial Planning hosted by the skilled investor selected my post on protecting your spouse from claims of creditors. 

The Carnival of Personal Finance #171was hosted by SoundMoneyMatters and included my post on best money tactics for Tuesday after the market mania on Monday.  

My post on the two personal finance lessons we should learn from the demise of investment banks was selected for the Carnival of Financial Learning. 

Personal Finance “Synchroblog” Project 

Just a heads-up on a big joint blogging project that is in process.  On the morning of October 7, nine personal finance bloggers will be simultaneously publishing their thoughts in response to the same question:  “What is the single most important initiative that the next administration should undertake to improve the economic health of the U.S. middle class?”  

The answers from each blogger in the project will link to the answers of each other “synchroblogger” so that you can easily move from one to the next and get different perspectives on this important issue. 

The project publication date was selected to coincide with the second presidential debate which will include a town hall type Q&A session of the candidates.  It will be interesting to see if our synchrobloggers hit any issues that are discussed at the debate. 

Anyway, be sure to check here on October 7 and begin your review of the synchroblog posts to prepare you for the debate.

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