Ahh, just when you could use a stiff drink on the company’s tab to kill the sobering mood wrought by this year’s financial carnage, you find out you’ll be coughing up for the bill yourself at the annual holiday shindig. Such is the case for scores of London’s financial workers. As Reuters’ Olesya Dmitracova reports, employees at some of the biggest names in town – Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas, Barclays and so on – will be on the hook for their own year-end parties. A reasonable cost-cutting measure, it seems, during these often unreasonable times. Too bad, though, for those who get stuck drinking swill should their annual bonus get slashed too.

Across the pond, some employees of failed Washington Mutual received some less digestible news on Friday. JPMorgan, which bought WaMu’s banking operations in September, announced job cuts were on the way for some at the former thrift’s Seattle headquarters and elsewhere. Though overall numbers are still not known, and most will retain their jobs, at least 1,600 back-office WaMu staff who worked in California got word they’d be out of a job by March. More concrete figures and dates for others are expected on Monday. How’s that for a start to the holiday season?

Has the credit crunch hurt your end-of-year party plans?