WaMu had fallen 98 percent over the past year on losses tied to subprime lending before trading was halted on news of the FDIC seizure. The company was one of the financial firms the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission protected from short selling this month as part of an effort to stabilize equity markets. WaMu’s bank had $188 billion in deposits. The company’s collapse makes WaMu the latest victim of the credit crunch, which also forced Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and IndyMac Bancorp into bankruptcy, drove Merrill Lynch & Co. to sell itself to Bank of America Corp. and brought about the Federal Reserve-financed purchase of Bear Stearns Cos. by JPMorgan Chase & Co.   WaMu was expected to lose as much as $19 billion on bad mortgages during the next 2 1/2 years. Standard & Poor’s cut the bank’s credit rating twice in nine days, to eight levels below investment grade, as chances decreased that any deal wouldn’t be a buyout of the whole company, leaving creditors of the holding company to face substantial losses.

					Some WaMu customers wary, angry. Executives’ greed bemoaned for bringing down bank Davidson, a WaMu customer for 10 years, said it’s hard to know whom to blame for the bank’s collapse.“Is it the poor sucker who wanted that interest-only loan or the bank that supplied it without checking his credit?” he asked.

					WASHINGTON — The seeds of the House Republican revolt over the financial industry bailout were sown in an e-mail message circulated Monday night as internal animosity built quickly over the Bush administration’s request for $700 billion to prevent an economic collapse. In a message to members of the conservative Republican Study Committee, leaders of the bloc of more than 100 lawmakers solicited ideas, calling for a “free-market alternative to the Treasury Department’s proposal so that, regardless of how individual R.S.C. members vote on final passage, House conservatives have something to be for.”

					The action comes on top of $247 billion that has already been committed to currency swaps with other major central banks, as authorities battle a global credit crunch sparked by the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage market last year.

					Fed moves again to boost dollar liquidity > Overnight lending rates have eased after spiking last week in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and mounting global worries over turmoil in the financial sector. But banks still appear reluctant to lend to each other for longer periods, leaving other short-term interest rates at elevated levels.

					Christopher Cox, the commission chairman, said he agreed that the oversight program was “fundamentally flawed from the beginning.The last six months have Made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work,”  The program “was fundamentally flawed from the beginning, because investment banks could opt in or out of supervision voluntarily. ”

					New-home sales fall to weakest level in 17 years Sales slump 11.5% to 460,000 pace for August Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have repeatedly stressed this week on Capitol Hill that the housing market must begin to recover before the nation’s battered financial sector can regain its footing.