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BANKING

US storm sucks in ’little guy’

AFP, New York
The biggest US bank to fail in history still promised dreams Friday. All clients demanded was to know whether they still had any money.
Nervous customers in New York braved rainstorms to check their accounts at Washington Mutual, or WaMu, following the lender's collapse Thursday and sale for 1.9 billion dollars to JPMorgan Chase.
Deposits ot up to 100,000 dollars are insured by the government. But that didn't stop the jitters.
"As soon as I walked in I asked if my money was going to be safe," said Reginald Barnes, a dapper actor leaving a Manhattan branch.
"They reassured me that everything is fine," Barnes, 31, said. "But it's kind of crazy."
Promotional slogans on the wall at aWaMu branch on glitzy 5th Avenue still promised: "We love making dreams come true!" " Free checking, free smiles."
Trish Deitch, a magazine copy editor in to check her money, was not dreaming - or smiling.
"It's worrisome. I'm frightened," Deitch, 52, said, shaking rain from her long coat.
Neither did Deitch have much faith in the multibillion-dollar financial sector rescue package under negotiation in Washington.
"I don't understand what's going on and I'm pretty educated. In fact, I'm not sure many people understand," she said. "I've been reading that the package they are developing might actually be bad for the little guy."
The abrupt disappearance of the nationwide retail lender
thrust ordinary people into a storm whose most visible victims have been glamorous Wall Street investment banks and their eye-poppingly well-paid employees.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) backs all small savings and JPMorgan Chase's purchase of WaMu should mean that customers notice little change in service.
Another depositor. Anne Brown, 40, expressed relief that her account is FDIC protected.
But she was "shocked" at the way Washington Mutual suddenly went under.
"It happened so quietly," she said. "It makes you wonder: what else is happening out there that we don't know about?"
That fear - fear that Wall Street's humiliating and ruin-
ous collapse is far from over --is eating into a country built on optimism.
"I'm disappointed," said WaMu client Louis Gebrail, 33. "I'm disappointed in our government. I mean between the economy and the war in Iraq, the country's really not in greatshape."
On 5th Avenue, the storm was intensifying.
Rain swept across shiny shop fronts. Swirling clouds enveloped the Rockefeller Center, a majestic Art Deco tower built in the 1930s, the last time the United States faced such economic chaos.
As she struggled with her umbrella in the doorway to WaMu, law student Jacqueline Aguilar said:
"I'm just taking it day by day. And I'm making sure that I'll be able to get out my money.”