Lost Bank (eBook)

The Story of Washington Mutual-The Biggest Bank Failure in American History

Kirsten Grind (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2012 | 1. Auflage
400 Seiten
Simon & Schuster (Verlag)
978-1-4516-1794-8 (ISBN)

Infos

During the most dizzying days of the financial crisis, Washington Mutual, a bank with hundreds of billions of dollars in its coffers, suffered a crippling bank run. The story of its final, brutal collapse in the autumn of 2008, and its controversial sale to JPMorgan Chase, is an astonishing account of how one bank lost itself to greed and mismanagement, and how the entire financial industry--and even the entire country-- lost its way as well.

Kirsten Grind's The Lost Bank is a magisterial and gripping account of these events, tracing the cultural shifts, the cockamamie financial engineering, and the hubris and avarice that made this incredible story possible. The men and women who become the central players in this tragedy-- the regulators and the bankers, the home buyers and the lenders, the number crunchers and the shareholders--are heroes and villains, perpetrators and victims, often switching roles with one another as the drama unfolds.

As a reporter at the time for the Puget Sound Business Journal, Grind covered a story set far from the epicenters of finance and media. It happened largely in places such as the suburban homes of central California and the office buildings of Seattle, but Grind covered the story from the beginning, and the clarity and persistence of her reporting earned her many awards, including being named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Gerald Loeb Award. She takes readers into boardrooms and bedrooms, revealing the power struggles that pitted regulators at the Office of Thrift Supervision and the FDIC against one another and the predatory negotiations of investment bankers and lawyers who enriched themselves during the bank's rise and then devoured the decimated bank in its final days.

Written as compellingly as the finest fiction, The Lost Bank makes it clear that the collapse of Washington Mutual was not just the largest bank failure in American history. It is a story of talismanic qualities, reflecting the incredible rise and the precipitous collapse of not only an institution but of trust, fortunes, and the marketplaces for risk across the world.

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An award-winning reporter chronicles the calamitous story of Washington Mutual, the single-largest bank failure in American history, in this fast-paced, compelling, and gripping saga of greed and excess.During the most dizzying days of the financial crisis, Washington Mutual, a bank with hundreds of billions of dollars in its coffers, suffered a crippling bank run. The story of its final, brutal collapse in the autumn of 2008, and its controversial sale to JPMorgan Chase, is an astonishing account of how one bank lost itself to greed and mismanagement, and how the entire financial industryeven the entire countrylost its way as well. Written as compellingly as the finest fiction, The Lost Bank introduces readers to the regulators and the bankers, the home buyers and the lenders who together created the largest bank failure in American history. The result is a magisterial and gripping account of the incredible rise and the precipitous collapse of not only an institution but of trust, fortunes, and the marketplaces for risk across the world.

Textauszug

Prologue

OUT OF TIME

Always an early riser, Steve Rotella arrived at WaMu just before 7:00 a.m. on September 25, 2008. The autumn morning was cool and dark. The president and chief operating officer of the country's largest savings and loan bank was almost always among the first executives to show up each day.

Rotella lived with his wife, Esther, in a 7,200-square-foot house abutting a large cemetery in the upscale, trendy Seattle neighborhood of Capitol Hill. Each day Rotella climbed into his BMW and made the short trip downtown, easily navigating the now-familiar back roads to the office. He avoided Capitol Hill's main street, where a Starbucks glowed among the closed facades of dozens of bars and boutiques, and young hipsters in skinny jeans lined up in front of a popular sidewalk coffee stand. Even at this time of the morning, there would likely be traffic in that direction, although not nearly the kind of traffic he was used to in New York. Instead, Rotella drove directly downhill, along a street crammed with parked cars, condominiums, and apartment buildings on either side. To the west, he could see the jagged peaks of the Olympic Mountains. As he paralleled the freeway, a large REI store loomed in front of him. When Rotella moved to the city three years earlier, he had promptly bought several thousand dollars' worth of outdoor gear at REI. He had been hiking just once.¹

He pulled his car into one of the executive parking spots underneath WaMu's new skyscraper. The bank had built the multimillion-dollar office space two years earlier and shared part of it with the Seattle Art Museum. Rotella walked onto the executive floor and poured himself a cup of coffee. He usually avoided the giant Starbucks in the bank's lobby, believing it was overpriced. Sometimes, however, his assistant offered to run out and fetch him a latte.

By this time, the team of WaMu employees tracking the bank's deposits had already prepared the morning report. Because of the time difference, it reflected branch activity on the East Coast. Earlier in the week, the team had delivered a glimmer of good news. WaMu customers across the country had stopped pulling their money out of the bank at such a rapid pace. Daily deposit outflows now hovered around $500 million, down from a peak of $2.8 billion on one frantic day during the prior week. Rotella turned on his computer and scanned through the report for that day. He found more good news. People seemed to have calmed down and weren't withdrawing their money on the basis of rumors and speculation. They had come to their senses and were bringing their money back. The East Coast branches had seen a net inflow of several hundred million dollars. The media helped the situation. Newspapers reported that Congress had spent the previous night hammering out details of an unprecedented $700 billion bailout of the financial system, which was likely to help all banks, including WaMu. President George W. Bush had delivered his first-ever address focused just on the economy, pleading with the nation to bless the decision. If the bailout wasn't approved, Bush warned, Americans could be in for 'a long and painful recession.' 'Our entire economy is in danger,' he told the public.²

Even with the news that help could be coming, and even though customers' money seemed to be returning to the bank, Rotella didn't feel reassured. He felt uneasy. The halls of WaMu seemed far too quiet.

On the East Coast, the bank's newly appointed chief executive, Alan Fishman, had been desperately trying to sell the company. Rotella could count on one hand the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 12.6.2012
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Finanzierung
• Themenwelt: Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Spezielle Betriebswirtschaftslehre ► Bankbetriebslehre
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Volkswirtschaftslehre ► Finanzwissenschaft
• ISBN-10: 1-4516-1794-1 / 1451617941
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4516-1794-8 / 9781451617948