They had about $15 billion of customer money parked in short term investments, of which about 80% as of a few weeks ago was rated Aaa. In their defense, you could say they thought they were operating prudently by keeping their assets short term rather than long term, and then only in highly rated securities. I could almost see their board giving them these restrictions, and feeling they were acting in a careful, judicious way. After all, the extra yield they were getting in going from Treasuries to Aaa mortgage-backed commercial paper was not very much and not a warning sign that something could go wrong.

Their competitors like Charles Schwab and Ameritrade didn't have investment pools like this, and their stocks are up while eTrade is getting hammered. So the stock market doesn't care how prudent eTrade thought it was being; right now they look like risk maniacs.

Of course it looked like easy money a few years ago, but didn't someone in the chain of command realize what was going to happen? It was obvious to me.

It was the YBG,IBG mantra: "You'll be gone, I'll be gone" and the average Joe and Josephine will end up holding the bag.

One suspects all the major banks in the world have lost so much that they are all technically insolvent. (Lost all their capital).

Like a centipede, dropped a few shoes, 90 or so more to drop...

from the FDIC if your bank collapses. Has anyone had any experience? Say Ing Direct goes down. How complicated is it to get my 100Ks back from them?... What if I need them in few business days?...

Street
By Mike Whitney

can someone please explain what 'money market' suddenly means? were these really just sliced and diced CBOs, the toxic barrels of anchovies and other colorful metaphors we've come to love around here?

I put my $60 in my PayPal account onto the money market interest-bearing arrangement. Glad its not real big cash.
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Hongpong.com