Here’s how it looks when your bank fails: pretty good, actually.

Welcome message when logging in to WaMu on 9/26/2008.

I’ve got a checking and a saving account at Washington Mutual, and I haven’t been too freaked out about the whole financial crisis.

Today it occurred to me, “Oh yeah, my bank’s failing,” and so I read an NPR article about it which said,

Trying to keep more people from taking their money out, regulators are saying it will be a seamless transition — and that the bank is reopening Friday as usual, just with new owners.

And so I thought I’d log in to my account and see if that’d be the case.  I was greeted by this message in the screenshot.  I realized that this is pretty much (hopefully!) a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see what it’s like when one’s bank “fails.”

Looks to me like everyone’s done an awesome job, including the IT people at WaMu, who’ve made a great web system.  WaMu’s always been a pretty good bank to be at; you know, as far as banks go.  So I have no complaints.