Washington Mutual (WaMu) has been a well known wealth manager for many years. Now it seems as if the worst financial crisis over so many years has robbed this company of the chance to have financial strength to continue as it has gone in for bankruptcy filing. The company could be in such a spot that shareholders could be left quite empty handed. The common shareholders could very well file a lawsuit that could continue for years on end. This is because WaMu has gone in for an out of court settlement that is worth around $6 billion and this means that the company will get only a small part of the claims against the estate.

The claims against WaMu why the company has gone in for bankruptcy filing are from bondholders and also preferred shareholders and these claims could be as high as $11 billion. The common shareholders are thus the least priority to be paid back by the company, leading to a lot of distress and heartburn among this constituency of shareholders. This has led to such common shareholders contemplating legal action. Such a move could result in a long drawn out case and lawsuit that could come in the way of any quick or amicable settlement

Apologies for thin posts, but the time change (did you reset your clocks?) and the book chat (see preceding post, we went nearly three hours) cut into my blogging time in a major way.

In pictures: Bear power BBC

The greatest film scenes ever shot Guardian. One of my favorites is nowhere to be found: the opening sequence from Yojimbo.

Hadrian’s Wall lit by “line of light” Telegraph

Demon Sheep Ad Man Strikes Again, Morphs Boxer Into A Blimp Huffington Poat

Pharma faces a character count conundrum Spoonful of Medicine. WTF? Drugs are now being marketed via Twitter?!?

Clinton rebukes Israel over new settlements Financial Times. The story is much more damning than its anodyne headline suggests.

Hearts may swoon when stocks do, study suggests PhysOrg

In Hard Times, Lured Into Trade School and Debt New York Times

Lehman as Enron 2.0 Archein

Welcome to America, Sucker Andy Kroll, TomDispatch

Private Equity’s Trojan Horse of Debt Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times. In case you wondered why the EU wants to keep US PE firms out. Morgenson is not indignant enough.

Wrong Surprise on Retail Sales Beat the Press

US Public Debt watch update One Salient Oversight

LA Area Port Traffic in February Calculated Risk

China’s Wen Rebuffs Yuan Calls, Opposes ‘Finger Pointing’ Bloomberg and Tensions escalate over China’s currency Financial Times. This is looking more serious, but given Team Obama’s track record, the odds of a climbdown are very high.

Antidote du jour (hat tip reader Gary P):

This is self-taught. Every once in a while, Jake will scour the house, gathering up all his possessions, then carry them around, showing them off to the rest of the family.

I think of him as our Canine Capitalist.

I chatted at the Book Salon on FireDogLake on Saturday (yes I screwed up completely in not notifying Naked Capitalism readers). The conversation was hosted by masaccio and led to a wide ranging discussion.

The chat started with his summary of the book:

Yves Smith brings the same clear and concise writing to ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism, her explanation of the Great Crash of 2008, that she shows every day at her website Naked Capitalism. Smith points to the abject failure of neoclassical economics as the beginning point for this disaster. The unproven assumptions of this theory were converted into Indubitable Truth by academic economists. Their careers were based on their ability to combine those Indubitable Truths with other unproven assumptions and turn them into mathematical formulas which, they said, explained the way the economy works. These ideas were widely accepted by corporate interests and their shills and think tanks, media elites and politicians, and turned into statutes and regulatory policy. Immediately the vipers on Wall Street exploited every one of the new weaknesses for personal profit, first at the expense of other traders, then at the expense of their own clients, and finally at the expense of taxpayers.

The session continues here. Enjoy!

Chrysler looks to be in worse shape than originally thought, according to the court proceedings. A new VW Scirocco is in the works, some guy learns to fly his Mitsubishi, and Brad Pitt may be portr…

Peter Schiff : The government inflated the Housing bubble

Peter Schiff introduces himself to the Killingworth, CT Republican Town Committee on 3-11-10. Peter Schiff : The government inflated the Housing bubble , all the government is trying to do is trying to stimulate the economy somehow so that they get reelected , Wall street greed never got is into trouble , main street is greedy to , the capitalism did not fail says Peter Schiff ,Where was Bloomenthal (the democrat candidate) four years ago when I was warning about these problems all over the media , Peter Schiff added , it is impossible for the economy to get better , when the government is spending four trillions a year ? Impossible……Finally Peter Schiff explains that he is against the National ID card …

Peter David Schiff, president of Euro-Pacific Capital, is a Connecticut-based brokerage firm have correctly predicted the U.S. stock-market collapse , the home mortgage meltdown and the credit crunch .
Peter Schiff discusses politics, world economies, and investment strategies and is now running for a Senate Seat in his native Connecticut , Peter Schiff is Author of the Best Seller Crash Proof How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse

Infowars.com | At the Treason in America Conference on 3/6/2010, ABC News decided to drop by and “cover” the event.

Kurt Nimmo | News report accepts without question government claim fluoride is safe.

Stacy Summary: Truth About Markets, London. We talk about so called free market capitalism in reality is rigged market capitalism; Hank Paulson and Dick Fuld, Lehmans and Barclays.

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Business Insider | Faced with a 300 million dollar budget deficit and a rapidly dwindling tax base, Detroit finds itself having to make some really hard choices.