This week, we couldn’t help but think of the famous “Dewey Defeats Truman” photgraph from the 1948 presidential election. For those of you that may not be familiar, the famous photo depicts President Harry Truman holding up a newspaper with the erroneous headline declaring Thomas Dewey’s victory, when Truman actually ended up winning the election over Dewey. The newspaper publisher badly jumped the gun there. It was actually Wachovia that reminded us this week of that moment.

The big news earlier in the week was Citigroup’s acquisition of Wachovia’s banking assets. The deal was publicized and both Wachovia and Citigroup put out press releases regarding the “done” deal. As far as Wachovia customers could tell, the deal was sealed. The firm posted a banner image to its public homepage linking to a press release that provided the details of the merger.

As of this morning, however, the news was that Wells Fargo has actually acquired Wachovia. Even Citigroup was surprised by the news as evident by this image showing a sign still up in one of their branches.

The first messaging put out by Citi and Wachovia was clear cut, a deal was happening and we would be Citibank customers. Now we might be Wells Fargo customers. At this point with Citi possibly filing suit to stop the merger and the FDIC seemingly standing with them, the only thing we know for sure is that we’re confused.