http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/2010/04/wamu_regulators_begin_testifying.html
11:32 a.m. EDT On WaMu's home equity loans
Apparently 90 percent of WaMu's home equity loans were "stated income," which means that borrowers basically told WaMu lenders their financial information without documentation.
Sen. Kaufman wanted to know how the inspector generals were looking at alleged fraud that occurred at the bank. Rymer cites the ongoing U.S. Attorney's office investigation, with the FBI, in Seattle, where they are looking at fraud at WaMu.
Kaufman: "It seems so systemic, that clearly top management of the company was well aware of what happened, essentially they were saying, 'Okay, stated income loans, that's fine, and it doesn't matter the size of the mortgage.'" Basically whatever mortgages we've got, we're going to have stated income and that's the policy. Then we say to people, 'You want to make a lot of money? These are the products we're going to sell and we're going to give you a heck of a lot of money if you do that and Wall Street says, 'Just get us the mortgages and we can sell them and they're out of your hair and we're all going to be a lot better.'
Rymer: There's the idea that these mortgages passed through so many hands so quickly that no one was going to be harmed by the fraud and if it wasn't the originator, it was someone down the line.
Thorson: These types of loans didn't help the borrowers at all. Look at the state of foreclosures and the pain and suffering that goes with that. The only reason that this succeeded was because of the financial gains made by people making the loans.
Kaufman: You know what scares me the most about this? I think not just here, but in credit default swaps, so much went on on Wall Street — we have rewarded people that said, 'I know what's going wrong but I can't stop doing it because I'm making so much money and when it all goes bad, it's okay to leave it to the taxpayer because I have all the money and my second house.'
11:13 a.m. EDT Where was the problem?
At the hearing, the senators are trying to figure out exactly where in the regulatory framework the problems existed in WaMu's regulation in the past 10 years, particularly in allowing the expansion into risky mortgage lending.
Sen. Ted Kaufman: "They were doing bad things and examiners were saying they were doing bad things. Do you understand my frustration?"
Thorson: "I completely agree with you and your frustration — this is what we deal with every day. We go against the reuglation and rules and 'How did they do this and that?' The bottom line is just what you're talking about — did they have the guts to say, 'Knock it off and stop it.' That's really what it comes down to when you're hiring regulators. All this paper (the IG investigation) really says is, 'Nope, didn't happen.'
10: 38 John Reich defends WaMu
I promise I'll go back to the hearing in a minute, but I've just reviewed emails that show Sheila Bair of the FDIC was interested in marketing WaMu to other banks, unknown to WaMu executives, as early as August 2008, two months before the bank was closed.
In an Aug. 2006 email, she told John Reich: "I'd like to discuss contingency planning for W during the call on Friday. Art talked with Scott about making some discrete inquiries to determine whether there are institutions which would be willing to acquire it on a whole bank basis if we had to do an emergency closing and on what terms. I understand you have strong objections to our doing so, so I'd like to talk this through."
Reich fired back, later that day, defending the bank while on vacation. He threatened to meet with Fed chairman Ben Bernanke about the issue, and potentially former Secretary Treasury Hank Paulson:
"You personally, and the FDIC as an agency, would likely create added instability if you pursue what I strongly believe would be a precipitous and unprecedented action," Reich wrote to Bair. "And if it occurs without my consent, I will not sit quietly by and observe — there would be a public reaction."
He continues: "I also believe there would be a high potential for FDIC actions of the type you are contemplating to cause irreparable harm to WaMu, if, at any point in the near future, WaMu was even mentioned, I would like to see a copy of the signed confidentiality agreement signed by the bank — required in any resolution scenario before an institution is told the name of the failing bank."
He asks: "Are you also trying to find buyers for Citi, Wachovia, Nat City and others?"
And he concludes the page-long email: "The government should not be in the business of arranging mergers — particularly before they are necessary, and we are not at that point in WaMu's situation."
10:34 EDT Internal emails btw WaMu regulators
I'm finally getting a chance to look at some of the emails that were blacked out when I tried to request them through the Freedom of Information Act last year.
It appears that TPG, the private equity firm that in the spring of 2008 led a $7.2 billion infusion of capital into WaMu, was apparently trying to provide more capital in September 2008, according to internal regulatory emails. I had heard last year that executives were looking into this.
Here is this email from one of WaMu's main regulators at the OTS, sent on Sept. 10, 2008, 15 days before the bank is seized:
"...it is clear to me that the FDIC hopes that TPG may be a willing party to inject capital in the bank. I thought it would be helpful if we invited David Bonderman (head of TPG) and his folks to join us for a meeting at our office where we could include the FDIC. The purpose of the meeting would be to discuss the various views of the institution's risk profile, current actions under consideration by the FDIC, and possible capital considerations. We would control the meeting and ensure that we have no repeat of the inappropriate behavior displayed by some of the FDIC in our last session with the bank," wrote Scott Polakoff to his boss, John Reich, former director of the OTS. (Reich will be testifying later this morning.)
10:21 am. EDT Inspector Generals testify
First up to testify — Eric Thorson, inspector general of the Department of the Treasury. (He was heading up the recent IG report that came out yesterday about WaMu's failure.
(Sidenote: The crowd at this hearing is much diminished from Tuesday's hearing, perhaps because there are no WaMu executives wandering around.)
"WaMu failed because its management pursued a high-risk business strategy without adequately underwriting its loan or controlling its risks," Thorson said. "In September 2008, WaMu was unable to raise capital to counter significant depositor withdrawals sparked by rumors of WaMu's problems and other high-profile failures at the time."
These hearings, by the way, are going on as political leaders are trying to pass a massive financial regulatory reform bill. Sen. Levin said in a press conference yesterday that he is in support of legislation proposed by Sen. Chris Dodd, which could mean that the OTS is closed and other regulators are given more power.
Jon Rymer, the Inspector General for the FDIC, is now talking about the FDIC's role in regulating WaMu. He points out that the FDIC noted weaknesses in the OTS' regulation, but didn't bring them up until it was too late.
"The FDIC did invoke back-up examination authority based on increasing FDIC internal risk monitoring in order to obtain additional information about WaMu. OTS resisted FDIC back-up examination requests because the OTS believed the FDIC did not meet the terms of an Interagency Agreement governing such requests," he said.
9:58 a.m. EDT Sen. Levin's opening statements
Sen. Carl Levin, (D-Mich.) in his opening statements, is slamming the Office of Thrift Supervision, WaMu's main regulator. He says the regulator acted more like a "speculator" than a "regulator."
"Why was OTS so reluctant to act?" Levin asks. His contention is that the OTS and WaMu were too cozy.
He says WaMu's downfall began in 2006, when the value of its subprime loans began falling. By the fourth quarter of 2007, WaMu had posted a $1 billion loss and another in the first quarter of 2008.
Levin also points toward WaMu's decision to turn down a purchase offer from JPMorgan in the spring of 2008 in favor of a $7.2 billion capital infusion. Levin is critical of that decision; he says it would have saved shareholders.
At the time of its bank failure, Levin said the regulators were worried WaMu "wouldn't even make it until the end of the week" that it was closed.
"Critics complain that WaMu should not have been shut down, that it should have received a taxpayer bailout under the TARP program, emergency lending from the Federal Reserve, and SEC protection from short-selling. But our focus here is not on the regulators' decision to close the bank, but on how regulators let the bank deteriorate to the point where its failure threatened to bust the deposit insurance fund," Levin said.
9:30 EDT WaMu's liquidity numbers
As part of hundreds of pages of documents just released is a sheet detailing WaMu's liquidity sometime in the third quarter of 2008. This is the first time any financial information about the bank has been released. According to this internal report from inside WaMu, called "Break the Bank," WaMu was projecting a scenario where it would run out of cash by the fourth quarter of 2008. At that point, according to the report, WaMu would be in the hole $514 million. It doesn't show what would happen to the bank's capital position, because the institution was considered "well-capitalized," and executives were working out a plan to transfer some of that cash into liquidity at the time of its seizure on Sept. 25, 2008.
Having looked at a more updated internal report on WaMu's liquidity position just two weeks before it was seized, this page of liquidity numbers (which is provided as a sheet, with no other documents from the internal report), looks like WaMu executives were projecting a worst case scenario situation. It also looks like their funding sources through the Fed discount window would have run dry in this scenario as well at the end of the fourth quarter of 2008. I'll let you know if I find more information.
9:11 EDT Live-blogging WaMu begins
Welcome to our live-blogging of the second Washington Mutual hearings in Washington, DC. today should be very interesting as WaMu's regulators will testify for the first time, including Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chairwoman Sheila Bair.
For a quick primer on what might be said today, I'll point you to the investigations into the bank's failure that were released on Thursday. Click here for my story about the reports.
Read more: Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle): WaMu regulators begin testifying