WaMu - The Bottom Of The Barrel

Just how bad was Washington Mutual with respect to the housing crisis? Via Andrew Leonard, the Seattle Times has been looking into the matter (Part I, Part II):

"I don't think Killinger intentionally set out to cut corners," said one senior executive who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But he certainly created an atmosphere in which doing the easy thing rather than the hard thing was OK."

Even the most notorious murder case of the 1990s made a cameo appearance, as Chapman learned in early 2007.

"Someone in Florida had made a second-mortgage loan to O.J. Simpson, and I just about blew my top, because there was this huge judgment against him from his wife's parents," she recalled. Simpson had been acquitted of killing his wife Nicole and her friend but was later found liable for their deaths in a civil lawsuit; that judgment took precedence over other debts, such as if Simpson defaulted on his WaMu loan.

"When I asked how we could possibly foreclose on it, they said there was a letter in the file from O.J. Simpson saying 'the judgment is no good, because I didn't do it.' "