Wow. Seattle Is About To Get An Injection Of About 19,000 Smart People Into Its Job Market....

[BlooInBloo]

http://www.forbes.com/markets/2008/11/28/wamu-jpmorgan-jobs-markets-equity-cx_lal_1128markets19.html


"Up to 19,000 employees of Washington Mutual face being laid off this weekend as JPMorgan Chase turns up the synergy on its recent acquisition.
...
The bulk of the job cuts will be at the Washington Mutual headquarters in Seattle due to the overlap in operations with the current employees at JPMorgan."


Oy.



EDIT: Clarified subject.

[glowing]

1. Merry Christmas.. and good tidings to you.

[msongs]

2. didnt jpmorgan get a bundle in the corporate thieves bailout scam? nt

[BlooInBloo]

3. Dunno - wouldn't surprise me if they did, though.

[HuckleB]

4. This sucks.

But why do you think bank employees are so smart?

[BlooInBloo]

6. These are behind-the-scenes people, not tellers, as the article said...

But certainly you are correct, in the most philistine literal terms: certainly not every last one of those folks is smart.

I stand corrected.

[HuckleB]

10. It's just hard to see the banking industry as a bastion of the best and brightest.

[BlooInBloo]

12. Not when it's investment banking, it's not....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_analyst

[HuckleB]

15. I'll pretend you didn't post that.

[BlooInBloo]

17. (shrug) Whatever floats your boat.

[HuckleB]

20. Are you paying attention to the world?

There's a reason WaMu, and so many other similar "banks" are down and out.

[BlooInBloo]

22. No. Only you are.

[HuckleB]

25. Yawn.

Think before you post. And don't be defensive when you don't.

[BlooInBloo]

27. Noted.

[madrchsod]

5. start a run on a sound bank by starting rumors.....

mission accomplished! jpmorgan gets a sound banking company for pennies.

thousands of people paid the price by losing their jobs and the rest of the country picks up the tab.

[BlooInBloo]

7. Um, it wasn't sound. The depository side had value, but the investment side...

had much greater negative value.

[MadMaddie]

8. This is bad for Seattle

The job section in the Sunday paper is down to 3-4 pages. There are not a lot of jobs available.

[BlooInBloo]

13. Yup. Damn I'm glad I left WaMu a couple years back.

[HuckleB]

16. It's the same everywhere.

[yodoobo]

9. Thats alot of vice presidents

(I've still never quite understood why every back office employee in a bank is a vice president)

That really is alot of people for one job market to absorb. Some of those folks will be still be looking for a job this time this year.

[HuckleB]

11. What did all those people do?

[HuckleB]

14. WaMu has 4300 employees in Seattle, and 5800 in Washington.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/388861_wamujobs22.html

So, your total is a bit off.

[BlooInBloo]

24. (shrug) Tell Forbes, not me.

[HuckleB]

28. Forbes did not say Seattle would lose 19000 jobs.

You did.

Assumptions never go well.

Ask the banking industry.

[BlooInBloo]

29. "The bulk of the job cuts will be at the Washington Mutual headquarters in Seattle"

Close enough for me to say what I said.

EDIT: Please tell me how 4,300 can be taken meaning "the bulk of 19000". Please.

[HuckleB]

30. Please tell me how you thought WaMu had anywhere near 19000 employees in Seattle.

[BlooInBloo]

31. My apologies for conveying the impression that I'm federal employment worker.

I'm not.

[HuckleB]

32. You live in Seattle.

And you thought WaMu had five times the number of employees they actually have in Seattle.

Not only that, you said you were a former employee.

Hello?

[BlooInBloo]

33. Hi!

Let the record reflect that I am not a federal employment official, regardless of the fact that I live in Seattle.

[Suich]

18. I think the number for Seattle is a lot lower.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008408806_wamu19.html

:shrug:

[HuckleB]

21. If WaMu totally disappeared from Seattle it would mean the loss of 4300 jobs.

Bad. But not 19000 bad.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/388861_wamujobs22.html

[RB TexLa]

19. Should they pay them to do duplicate jobs? Or should JPM employees be laid off to keep the

employees from the failed bank?

There are about 24,000 WM employees that are being retained by JPM. That's a pretty big expansion.

[HuckleB]

23. No, they shouldn't duplicate jobs.

As for you description of the whole thing as an expansion. It is an expansion for one company, but not for the economy, or the country as a whole.

[BlooInBloo]

26. I don't recall criticizing JPM.

[RB TexLa]

34. You didn't. JPM is getting criticized for not keeping all retail even though

they are keeping more than required for the usual retention levels. The thought is there will be new customers to replace old ones. Plans for west coast expansion were solid with WM as a competitor this just sped things up a bit but worth the cost.


Edited to add: Guess it's easy to get defensive when there are people criticizing people for returning shopping carts thinking that will cost jobs.