The Mills of God

I'm still rational, of course; I understand perfectly well that Washington Mutual has folded as the result of general economic conditions caused by wellmeaningbutmisguided social engineering on the part of our beloved Congress, which is now scrambling to fix what it broke.

And yet I can't help feeling that the death of Washington Mutual is a just punishment for its cultural sins: an ad campaign with the smarm of an Obama stump speech; and a nickname, WaMu, and a slogan, Wahoo, as racist as Chief Noc-A-Homa.

No bank, incidentally, was more uncooperative and bureaucratic about releasing the funds of its dead depositors: all decedents' accounts would up in a black hole in the benighted burg of Northridge, California, whence it was almost impossible to extricate them.

Good riddance to WashMutt, say I!

Now, if someone could only teach HSBC Bank USA how to add and subtract, we might actually build a banking system worthy of the 21st Century.