[dealbreaker.com] said it best: "I'm still trying to get my head around this: What does it mean when the stock you hold that is sitting at $6.00 per share posts a $11.00 per share loss? That's the Wachovia shareholder experience."

"Let's just close our eyes and imagine what the combination of Wells Fargo and Wachovia will create," said CEO Bob Steel.

Step One: Close eyes
Step Two: Get punched in the face
Step Three: See the pretty creation

I hope Wells doesn't regret taking in all this debt. From what I've read, they've been one of the more stable banks these days

As an electrical engineer I'm used to dealing with nanoseconds = 0.000,000,001 seconds or even picoseconds = 0.000,000,000,001 seconds.

Perhaps this some sort of conservation of numbers principle where, if some people have to deal with numbers with lots of digits to the right of the decimal point then other people have to deal with numbers to the left of the decimal point.

Heck, it might be computer engineers fault they can have big losses like this. Imagine if they had to count all that money without the help of computer they could never count that high.

One wonders if this is a new record for amount of loss in one quarter.

Shouldn't that number actually be -23,700,000,000?

Wow. One company, in one quarter, lost more than Latvia's yearly GDP.

@Tmoney02: I think GM holds that title with a $39 billion loss.

Let's all just close our eyes and imagine a world where negative numbers don't exist... Yes. That's not -23,700,000,000, it's |-23,700,000,000|. Nothing to worry about...

@adamondi: But a loss of negative anything is the same as a gain, yes?

"Quick, while their eyes are closed, grab their wallets!"

@Kishi: lol! well played.