April 08, 2008

FLASH: Toxic lender Washington Mutual closes its entire network of mortgage shops, records a $1.1 billion loss, gets emergency bailout, lays off 3,000


Just one step closer to the grave...

If you have money in WaMu - GET IT OUT NOW, GET IT OUT TODAY AND DON'T LOOK BACK. In my personal opinion, this bank will fail, and it's not worth the risk. And no, it's not too big to fail. WaMu will not be bailed out by Benny and the Inkjets. Depositers stand to lose everything beyond their FDIC limits. And shareholders will be wiped out.

They called them "liar's loans" for a reason. Get ready for the lawsuits and criminal charges next.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Washington Mutual Inc (NYSE:WM - News), the largest U.S. savings and loan, said on Tuesday it obtained a $7 billion capital injection from private equity firm TPG Inc and other investors, but that mortgage problems will lead to a $1.1 billion quarterly loss and the elimination of 3,000 jobs.

41 comments:

Anonymous said...

f_ckity f_ck f_ck.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee....

Anonymous said...

The thing about all this that I just don't understand is how were these highly paid, well educated businessmen so stupid?

I've made some financial mistakes, but I'm an amateur. These guys are professionals.

Anonymous said...

Well, who gets handed the bad mortgages now? Countrywide? Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

Anonymous said...

Benny and the Inkjets.......

Turn off comments now....Keith wins his own thread!

Anonymous said...

It should be renamed...

"WHAM U ALL GOT SCREWED!"

Anonymous said...

WaMu's specialty was the pay option ARMs

Anonymous said...

They also cut their dividend to $0.01 from 15 cents. It's nice to reward the loyal shareholders whom stuck it out!

Anonymous said...

Thanks to HP I bailed on this toxic waste bank a year ago.

And thank you WaMu for the higher then average savings rates back then. I only had to deal with your terrible customer service and long lines to earn it, along with the risk of you recklessly lending out my $ to unqualified people. Now your poor management practices have come home to roost. Enjoy the fruits of your labors. R.I.P.

Anonymous said...

WAMU closed wholesale lending not retail. No "shops" have been closed.

Anonymous said...

of course he'll figure out some way to bail them out. Any bank that goes down while the economy is so shaky stands to cause the rest of the dominos to fall. He has to keep people believing or the whole system crumbles

Casey Serin said...

I'll buy more than happy to buy out WaMu... just give me a no-money-down, interest-only $2 billion loan with $50M cash back at closing, and we'll be all squared away! :-)

Anonymous said...

TPG jumps in way to soon and will lose lots of dollars.

Anonymous said...

hmmmm. maybe moving to panic?

Anonymous said...

They also cut their dividend from 15 cents to 1 cent.

Anonymous said...

You know the economy is bad when the starbucks siren has to show her tits - again.

Check out their 'new' old logo on every coffee cup.

Anonymous said...

Got my 1st mortgage from them and I guess it will be my last now. I came upon WaMu via an independent broker when PHH (whom I had from my bank USAA) dumped me because the condo complex where I wanted to buy had too high a percentage of renters for a private mortgage. The independent mortgage broker knew the condo plan qualified for FHA and WaMu had an FHA program he put me into. Those were the days when you could trust the system, no you cannot

Anonymous said...

sounds like a cost saving measure and nothing else...with 2300 branches nationwide it never made sense to have separate mortgage branches...the same amount of money will be loaned (or not loaned)

Anonymous said...

It's taken longer than I thought but it's finally here, Good bye! And good riddins WaMu!

Frank R said...

I've lived in OC for a little over a year now and the huge new WaMu campus in Irvine has been vacant the entire time ... lol

Anonymous said...

I can't believe anyone would be stupid enough to put any money (equity) into this. According to the Yahoo Finance balance sheet, the company had a total Tangible Net Worth of only $16.9BN at 12/31/07 against $303BN of liabilities - $252BN of which were current liabilities. If their long term investments, which are stated as $286.5BN are only worth $0.90 on the dollar (a very optomistic assumption), then even with the injection they are still underwater. Is anyone anywhere buying MBS at $0.90 on the dollar right now???????

Seriously, there has to be more to this story. I must be missing something. I just can't believe there's anyone in the world who is smart enough to be managing that kind of money who sincerely believes that this company is even remotely solvent.

Anonymous said...

Texas Pacific Group is massive, they've obviously made good moves in the past... what's their play? lawsuit protection from the Dems? RTC on roids buying foreclosures back from them? this just looks really dumb.

Anonymous said...

Ouch.

Last time someone gave me 7 billion, I went out and bought a small country...I didn't layoff 3000 people.

Good thing my money (all 5k) is in Wachovia

brokersleaveyoubroke said...

It doesn't make sense for someone to dump 7 billion into WaMu unless they got a wink and a nod form Ben that the fed would buy up some of their toxic waste securities. I bet the investors got some kind of assurances of a bail out. Nothing would surprise me now.

Anonymous said...

according to this article, citi is shutting down the warehouse lender first collateral services

Article Created: 03/13/2008
http://www.insidebayarea.com/business/ci_8557444

BondsOfSteel said...

I hope this keeps them alive untill my Jan 2010 WM bond matures.

I sold the stock over a year ago in the mid 30s when I started reading HP. (I was already suspisous of them when they started raising ATM fees.)

Anonymous said...

The stock is trading at $11.80, but the dividend is $.04 p.a.

I don't know much about the stock market but that looks like a .003% return to me.

Am I missing something?

Anonymous said...

This Wamu $7 billion deal has the Zionists' bearded bitch written all over. Same deal as BSC.

Now the crooks on Wall Street don't have to fold anymore; all they do is call their little bearded bitch at the Fed to bring a buyer and trade our tax money for housing gambler's cancer paper.

What's on Idol?

Anonymous said...

MORGAN STANLEY CEO CALLS BOTTOM!!!

"The collapse of the subprime market in the U.S. has reached its eighth inning or ``maybe top of the ninth,'' Mack said today...."
---John Mack, Morgan Stanley CEO.

HELL all you HPers need to rush out and immediately put double down on some of those pre-construction condos they got in Florida!

Buy now or be priced out forever!

Anonymous said...

While you guys are on Yahoo finance trying to calculate stuff on envelopes, private equity has hundreds of people working 24/7 with lots of talent buying into stocks down 60-70%. no i dont work in private equity, but you better have some knowledge thats very unique to take the other side of their trade and be negative. beware

Anonymous said...

Go ahead and fight the Fed, dopes!

The books may be cooked, but you HPers will be toast if you don't wake up and see that this whole thing is rigged to take off. The Dow will see 17K by year end and the bankers will be laughing as they collect another round of huge bonuses.

Anonymous said...

I'm on Yahoo Finance and I would argue that there are plenty of instances where really smart guys in private equity with teams of analysts have gotten it wrong. Cerebrus buying Chrysler comes to mind!

Further, it's not like TPG was the first private equity group WAMU went to. TPG is going where lots of other smart private equity guys decided not to go.

Ultimately TPG made a highly leveraged bet (with other people's money) on the housing market and the underlying assets in WAMU's portfolio.

Anonymous said...

It takes a special kind of stupid to put more than the FDIC limit into any bank, not just WaMu.

Anonymous said...

A friend told me he got a 23-cent late charge on a WaMu credit card. He religiously pays his bill when it comes due. Sent his check out 18 days before due date, received in Wilmington the next day, presented to his home bank and paid by his bank the third day.

"Why the 23 cent late charge," he asked cust svc?

WaMu ACCEPTED his payment one hour after 12:00noon on the due date, 18 FREAKIN DAYS LATER! Seems that in the fine print of the WaMu cc contract, your account is only credited when WaMu DECIDES TO ACCEPT your payment, regardless of when you made the payment. That applies to online payments and automatic monthly withdraws as well.

"O.K., How much will I owe if I send a check out TODAY for the 23 cents, PLUS the interest it will accrue?" my friend asks.

Cust svc answer: $10.24,
seems there's a service charge for anything under a dollar payment.

The scam is pretty obvious. Most people using their cc, whether or not they pay it off every month, wouldn't blink twice at a less than a dollar service charge. “It must have been something I did. It will just get added to next month's purchases, no big deal,” RIGHT?

Now, multiply that by how many MILLIONS of credit cards WaMu has out there, and their users who didn’t question a trivial fee!

My friend sent them a check for $10.24, AND closed his cc account and his bank account (about $62,000.) Everybody should do the same!

Eat death and die, WaMu!

Anonymous said...

private equity has hundreds of people working 24/7 with lots of talent buying into stocks down 60-70%.

That sounds like all those quant funds that blew up

Anonymous said...

libvet,

they aren't stupid, they just have no ethics.

They made money on the way up, getting great bonuses due to the gains a monkey could make by ignoring risk.

When the bottom falls out, they don't pay those bonuses back. So they have incentive to make big profits followed by big losses.

Better to make huge profits for 3 years and then have the bottom fall out and lose all those gains and more then it is to make a small profit each year for 4 years. Well better for the guy getting the bonuses, not so great for the shareholders...

Anonymous said...

WOO-HOO!!

Lost Cause said...

Is it Aprils Fool's Day again?

Lost Cause said...

MuHaHaHa...

Anonymous said...

YOU MIGHT WANT TO CONSIDER GETTING YOUR MONEY OUT OF WASHINGTON MUTUAL -- TODAY!

NOT TOMORROW, NOT IN A COUPLE OF DAYS -- but TODAY!

I'M HEARING VERY BAD THINGS. IF I DON'T SEE LINES OUTSIDE WAMU BRANCHES TODAY, THERE'S GOING TO BE A LOT OF SAD PEOPLE OUT THERE.

DON'T TAKE THIS LIGHTLY. THAT'S ALL I CAN SAY AT THIS POINT.

Anonymous said...

Investing...and life...is all about decision-making. One does need the moxy to obtain and analyze data, but other than that...it's all about that moment when you say 'yes' or 'no'.
Analysts working 24/7 - belch, fart and blow my nose by closing one nostril with my indez finger.

Anonymous said...

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