LET ME BE the first to bestow the most freakin’-obvious nickname onto the Mariners’ new manager: The Intentional Wakamatsu. Thank you, really.

SOME 3,000 WAMU HEADQUARTERS STAFFERS could lose their jobs in the next few months. Three thousand bankers hitting the pavement at once won’t be a good thing for all the local consumer industries (from real estate on down to doggie daycare) that have staked their futures on catering to the upper professional caste.

And where are we gonna place all these idled IT techs, comptrollers, paper pushers, junior flunkies, second-tier poobahs, and adjustable-rate adjusters? Michael Moore, on Larry King Live, suggested any automaker bailout be predicated on making the automakers start making what we need to have made (public transit infrastructure, post-petroleum vehicles). But what kind of make-work project can we create for bankers? Can we (and by “we,” I really mean Gates and Allen) launch a massive startup employing hundreds upon hundreds of bureaucrats to create an eco-friendly actuarial table? Or will we see panhandlers outside the WaMu Center tower holding professionally designed signs reading WILL WOO-HOO FOR FOOD?