Just in case you weren’t mad anymore, a new U.S. Senate report called “Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse” reveals even more details about how reckless a number of major financial institutions were during the housing bubble:
Singled out for criticism is the Office of Thrift Supervision, which oversaw some of the nation’s most aggressive lenders, including Countrywide Financial, IndyMac and Washington Mutual, whose chief executive was Kerry Killinger. Noting that the agency’s officials viewed the institutions it regulated as “constituents,” the report said that the office relied on bank executives to correct identified problems and was reluctant to interfere with “even unsound lending and securitization practices” at Washington Mutual.
The report describes how two risk managers at the bank were marginalized by its executives. One of them told the committee that executives began providing the regulator with outdated loss estimates as the mortgage crisis widened. After the risk manager told regulators that the estimates it had received were dated, Mr. Killinger fired him.
From 2004 to 2008, for example, the regulatory office identified more than 500 serious deficiencies at Washington Mutual, yet did not force the bank to improve its lending operations, according to the report. And when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the bank’s backup regulator, moved to downgrade the bank’s safety and soundness rating in September 2008, John M. Reich, the director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, wrote an angry e-mail to a colleague. Referring to Sheila Bair, the F.D.I.C. chairwoman, he wrote: “I cannot believe the continuing audacity of this woman.” Washington Mutual failed two weeks later.