FLASH; Toxic lender IndyMac files for Chapter 7 liquidation / bankruptcy protection. Gee, what a shock, eh HP'ers? No, we never saw that one coming!

Now if we can just get the Feds to pick up Michael Perry and toss him in the clink, we'll be done with this sordid chapter.

IndyMac Bancorp Files for Liquidation After Seizure

IndyMac Bancorp Inc., the second- largest U.S. independent mortgage lender before it was seized by federal bank regulators three weeks ago, filed to liquidate its remaining assets under bankruptcy protection.

One more time, so when it happens, people won't be able to say they weren't warned: GET YOUR MONEY OUT OF COUNTRYWIDE, WASHINGTON MUTUAL AND INDYMAC!!

Banks will now start to fail. Don't take chances.

Period.

The Fed and taxpayer will bail some of 'em out. Some will be bought up, wiping out their shareholders. But others will fold up shop and just go away, leaving their account holders, especially the fools who carried more than the FDIC limits, in a world of pain.

The FDIC will pay out some of the first to fail, but then the FDIC itself will need to be bailed out by the taxpayer. And by the time the FDIC gets around to paying (if they pay), the dollar itself will be even more worthless.

And the first to fail? The banks who have the most wildly-overvalued toxic mortgage garbage still on their balance sheets. Better safe than sorry, and in my personal opinion, just looking at the stocks of some of these banks should show you that things are quite stable there today.

IF YOU HAVE MONEY AT COUNTRYWIDE BANK, INDYMAC BANK, E*TRADE BANK, WASHINGTON MUTUAL OR ANY OF THE OTHER GARBAGE LENDERS, GET IT OUT NOW AND GET IT OUT FAST.

I would imagine none of you do. HP'ers are in the know. But there's a lot of people out there that for whatever reason (what's on Idol?) still have no idea what's going on or what's to come. That's who we need to reach.

129,000 screwed savers in Scotland just learned the painful definition of "illiquid" today: Panic selling shuts £2bn property fund

I wish I could warn everyone. It upsets me to no end to read stories like these. Let me be as crystal clear as possible for anyone reading this blog:

IF YOU HAVE MONEY IN BANK ACCOUNTS OR INVESTMENTS THAT ARE NOT GUARANTEED, INSURED, OR CANNOT BE WITHDRAWN ON A MOMENT'S NOTICE - GET IT OUT NOW AND GET IT OUT FAST. YOU STAND TO LOSE EVERYTHING IF YOU DO NOT. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

One of Britain's biggest property funds was forced to shut its doors to withdrawals yesterday after the slump in commercial prices triggered panic selling by small investors.

The move prompted fears of a Northern Rock-style run on billions of pounds invested in once high-flying funds which many savers have seen as a safe haven for their pensions.

Scottish Equitable said yesterday that 129,000 small investors in its £2bn property fund will not be able to access their money for up to a year

I'll take "Why government idiots shouldn't bail out failing banks" for $110 Billion Alex

The UK taxpayer has been raped by the incompetent stooges running their government, who have now bailed out failed bank Northern Rock for £55 billion and counting, even though the taxpayer never had a say in this slippery slope disaster. Yes, that's £55 billion and counting. That's more than the annual education budget for the nation. And it didn't have to be.

When a bank makes stupid decisions, the bank should fail. Period. When depositors deposit more than the protected amount in a bank, and the bank goes tits up, the depositor should lose his money. The rules going into the game were clear. When the government changes the rules mid-game, credibility dies and moral hazard skyrockets. And that's where we are now, since we're run by monkeys, and it's just gonna get worse.

Meanwhile, the US taxpayer in on the hook now for hundreds of billions at the FHLB, an institution with an implicit taxpayer guarantee who's pissing money away to the likes of soon-to-go-bankrupt WaMu and Countrywide at an alarming rate, and the taxpayer will end up bailing out all of 'em.

And then there's Fannie and Freddie, who stand to lose TRILLIONS before the smoke clears. And again, even though there's no law that says we have to, the US taxpayer will end up paying.

There should be outrage. There should be investigations. There should be a media storm. There should be PANIC.

(sound of crickets chirping)

At least you know what's happening HP'ers, and what's going to happen. Lot of good that'll do you, but at least you know.

At the stroke of a pen, the Government has again weighed into the catastrophe at Northern Rock.

In its latest move, it is offering banks who lend to the beleaguered mortgage lender in the wholesale market an open-ended guarantee that they will not lose any money.

This extraordinary action, which makes the rescue of Northern Rock the most expensive in financial history, came on the day that the Bank of England made it clear that the £55 billion-plus bail-out is part of something much worse.

FLASH: Mega-bank UBS does the mortgage meltdown pokey for another $10 billion in losses (yes, that's "billion"). And that's what it's all about.

You put your toxic loan portfolio in,
You put your billions in writedowns out,
You put your CIVs and CDOs in,
And you shake it all about,

You do the mortgage meltdown pokey
and you turn your balance sheet around
And that's what it's all about.

(Sure is gonna get interesting once the banks and their incompetent auditors realize it's not just the subprime debt that ain't getting paid back. Still early days for the mortgage meltdown pokey - lot of dancing still to come!)

Swiss banking giant UBS said Monday that it will write down the value of its subprime mortgage holdings by a further $10 billion, leading to a loss in the fourth quarter and potentially wiping out all its profits for the year.

The bank also announced plans for a capital injection of 13 billion Swiss francs ($11.5 billion) from the government of Singapore and an unnamed investor in the Middle East.

"Conditions in the U.S. mortgage and housing markets have continued to deteriorate, and we have updated our loss assumptions to the levels implied by the current distressed market for mortgage securities," said CEO Marcel Rohner.

The group took a write-down of around $3.4 billion in early October, but warned later in the month that it may have to take further charges if the U.S. housing market deteriorated further.