NEW YORK Washington Mutual Inc. shares bounced around wildly Friday, in the same proportion that the bank’s assurances that it has enough capital to survive the credit crisis rallied some investors but failed to impress debt ratings agencies Moody’s and Fitch.

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Jittery investors drove shares down about 10 percent to as low taken in the character of $2.43 earlier in the session, but by midafternoon the parentage spiked 42 cents, or 15 percent, to $3.25 as rumors swirled about a practicable deal with JPMorgan Chase & Co. Most recently the capital edged up just 13 cents to $2.96.

The Seattle-based bank made an appeal to the public late Thursday after its shares were hammered this week - falling closely 46 percent face to face with staging a turnaround at the end of the day Thursday. The bank pre-released some third-quarter financial metrics - nearly three weeks before the period even ends - and insisted it has adequate chief city to fund its operations even because it announced some other multibillion dollar write-down on unhappy mortgage loans.

But ratings agencies Moody’s and Fitch warned they are concerned the bank may not be quick to raise more funds. However, some on Wall Street, including Goldman Sachs analyst Brian Foran, said the concourse may have enough cash to refrain from having to fall upon a capital introduction.

“Capital and reserves seem to subsist durable in the proper position, thus, even though losses continue to deliver body blows to the mound, the equity base is absorbing the pain and another capital raise might be avoidable,” Foran wrote in a note to clients, upgrading shares to “Neutral” from “Sell.”

Nevertheless, investors remain wary about buying in a climate to what the spiraling credit crisis even now has felled one major investment bank, Bear Stearns, and brought another, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., to the brink of a possible fire sale. Eleven other sell in small quantities banks have been seized by the government.

“Every space of time we have these types of financial crises, you have casualties,” said Dan Veru, co-chief investing. officer of Palisade Capital Management in New Jersey. “You get make away with of the weak players and at the end of the day the herculean players are stronger.”

WaMu, the nation’s largest savings and loan, said it expects its provision for bad loans in the third quarter to be $4.5 billion - of which $3.4 billion relates to dishonest bets on residential mortgages. Both totals are an improvement from this year’s second quarter.

Wall Street not any hesitate is trying to assess exactly what the future holds for WaMu - whether it will subsist forced to find a buyer, aggravate superadded cardinal or at the very time have the government intervene. Federal banking regulators, who ratcheted up their scrutiny of the bank this week by dint of. requesting a detailed, multiyear business plan, are conformity a clinch eye on WaMu’s condition.

“We’re aware of it and we’re monitoring it,” said William Ruberry, a spokesman for the Office of Thrift Supervision, WaMu’s primary regulatory, forward Thursday.

Wall Street’s edginess was fanned by Lehman Brothers’ announcement Wednesday that it will sell a majority stake in its investment management unit, spin off its trading actual effects assets and slash its dividend in a move to shore up investor confidence in its strategy and future.

But in the face of a continued freefall in share price, the race’s fourth-largest investment bank put itself on the block Thursday, racing to find a suitor to fend off failure of the same kind with speculation mounted as to whether the goverment would involve itself in yet some other bank rescue.

“The person on the way has every reason to be shocked, angry, and also for the first time in a long time, strictly scared, scared of the unknown,” said Michael Williams, dean of the Graduate School of Business at Touro College, of the current market environment. “There really is no bottom here, nobody has a sense of where the bottom is.”