It was similarly surreal when WaMu disintegrated -- they sold their deposits to Chase for less than the amount of the deposits, which seems odd at first ("they just sold a pile of money for less than the money itself was worth"), but isn't really. WaMu couldn't just spend those deposits, they were only worth the amount of money that could be extracted in fees for holding the accounts and from invested the deposited money, which was naturally less than the value of the pile of money.