Seattle Bubble

I thought we could use a thread to discuss the insanity that reigns in the financial world today. You all already know the news. IndyMac taken over by the FDIC in the third-largest bank failure in US history. The bailouts of Fannie & Freddie have begun.
Here’s another take on the weekend news:
Now [...]

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From today’s Everett Herald: Housing slump hits local banks hard
Low interest rates, the loss of the home construction boom and investor pessimism all are weighing down on bank stocks, dealing a big blow to all three of the local banks traded on Wall Street.
Lynnwood’s City Bank, along with Frontier Financial and Cascade Financial — both [...]

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Over the weekend, the Seattle Times published an article titled Bad real-estate loans stack up for smaller local banks, about the exposure local banks have to real estate loans. The gist of the article was that many local banks, squeezed out of the mortgage business by the likes of WaMu and Countrywide, had doubled down [...]

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How about a few more WaMu updates. The (bad) news seems to keep coming for the Seattle-based bank.
First up, a look back at how WaMu got itself into this mess, courtesy of the Seattle Times: Where WaMu went wrong. This article has its own thread in the forums, so be sure to check [...]

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