Saying Yes, WaMu Built Empire on Shaky Loans

[groovedaddy]

“We hope to do to this industry what Wal-Mart did to theirs, Starbucks did to theirs, Costco did to theirs and Lowe’s-Home Depot did to their industry. And I think if we’ve done our job, five years from now you’re not going to call us a bank.”

— Kerry K. Killinger, chief executive of Washington Mutual, 2003

SAN DIEGO — As a supervisor at a Washington Mutual mortgage processing center, John D. Parsons was accustomed to seeing baby sitters claiming salaries worthy of college presidents, and schoolteachers with incomes rivaling stockbrokers’. He rarely questioned them. A real estate frenzy was under way and WaMu, as his bank was known, was all about saying yes.

Yet even by WaMu’s relaxed standards, one mortgage four years ago raised eyebrows. The borrower was claiming a six-figure income and an unusual profession: mariachi singer.

Mr. Parsons could not verify the singer’s income, so he had him photographed in front of his home dressed in his mariachi outfit. The photo went into a WaMu file. Approved.

“I’d lie if I said every piece of documentation was properly signed and dated,” said Mr. Parsons, speaking through wire-reinforced glass at a California prison near here, where he is serving 16 months for theft after his fourth arrest — all involving drugs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/business/28wamu.html?th&emc=th

[BOSSHOG]

1. This is untrue and unfair to WAMU

they were just fine patriotic american businessmen trying to make a living by working within reasonable guidelines and attempting to make the market work for all of us. The real culprits are the people who built thousands and thousands of mansions in the slums of America by lying about their incomes and fabricating their net wealth. Don't you listen to right wing radio where real Americans dispense the truth like pez dispensers to their sugar addicts?

[sandnsea]

2. Thank you

And just ignore all that credit default derivative stuff.

I do not understand why people don't get that everybody pays money to live somewhere every month and in many places rent is not cheaper than a mortgage.