Seattle Bubble

From today’s Seattle Times: Feds seize WaMu in nation’s largest bank failure

WaMu’s 43,200 employees won’t feel any immediate impact, though it’s likely JPMorgan will drastically shrink the thrift’s headquarters staff. More than 3,500 people work at WaMu’s 42-story headquarters at Second Avenue and Union Street, along with 800 people elsewhere in Seattle and 1,500 people elsewhere in Washington state.

WaMu is also downtown’s largest office tenant, with about 1.6 million square feet in the central business district. It put some space on the market in recent months, helping raise downtown’s vacancy rate.

JPMorgan reportedly sent e-mails to all WaMu employees asking them to report for work as usual today.

Not surprisingly, I’ve got a few friends that work at WaMu corporate downtown. I really feel pity for them. The fact that WaMu put itself into such a dangerous position was not the fault of the rank-and-file corporate employees, but they’ll be the ones to feel the brunt of this failure.

I’d like to be clear that I do not take any pleasure in knowing that 4,300 people in Seattle are likely to lose their jobs, or the effect that will have on Seattle’s economy.

Another interesting bit from the article:

JPMorgan, which earlier this year offered to buy WaMu for $7 billion in stock — a deal former CEO Kerry Killinger turned down in the belief he could salvage the company — was the high bidder in an auction the FDIC conducted Wednesday, Bair said. Three other banks submitted bids for WaMu’s banking assets.

So four banks were bidding on WaMu’s assets, and $1.9 billion was the highest bid. Dang.

(Drew DeSilver, Seattle Times, 09.26.2008)

Bloomberg: JPMorgan Buys WaMu’s Deposits as Thrift Is Seized

JPMorgan Chase & Co., the third- biggest U.S. bank by assets, agreed to pay $1.9 billion for the deposits of Washington Mutual Inc. after the thrift was seized by regulators in the biggest bank failure in U.S. history.

The U.S. government closed Seattle-based Washington Mutual amid customer withdrawals of $16.7 billion since Sept. 15, the Office of Thrift Supervision said in a statement. WaMu had “insufficient liquidity” and was in an “unsound” condition, the OTS said.
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“JPMorgan is getting a steal compared with what they were going to pay,” said Scott Adams, a pension and investment analyst at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Oakland, California, which owns WaMu shares. “It’s very tragic.”

WaMu collapsed after its credit rating was slashed to junk and potential suitors passed on making a bid. Facing $19 billion of losses on soured mortgage loans, the lender put itself up for sale last week.

New York-based JPMorgan won’t acquire liabilities of the lender, including claims by shareholders and subordinated and senior debt holders, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said.

For those of us that still have some money in accounts, the FDIC page on the failure/sale has some details about how the transition is going to go down.

I left a few hundred dollars in an account there just out of morbid curiosity. Also, it allows me to write about the process from the perspective of a depositor.

I hope none of you bought lots of WaMu stock when it was $2 thinking it was a good deal…

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 here’s the problem - while Fannie and Freddie are claimed to be all 80/20 full-doc loans this is in fact a lie.

In fact, a huge percentage of the loans they took on or guaranteed in the last five years were packed with fraud or serious deficiencies in underwriting in some form, whether it be appraisal fraud, claimed income fraud, LTVs as high as 100%, or all three!

So how bad could this get?

Very bad.
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In reality I believe that Fannie and Freddie could suffer as much as $900 billion in losses as this all plays out. This assumes that 10% of their portfolio turns out to be essentially worthless and 20% is impaired by at least 10%, with the rest being 100% “money good.”

Frankly, I think that’s a bit optimistic…
…
See, there are reportedly 75 (or more) banks on the “troubled” list. The FDIC doesn’t publish that list. Gee, I wonder why, especially after Friday, when IndyMac went under.

Not that this should have been a surprise to anyone, given that it was trading at well under a buck for about a week. Do ‘ya think that’s a good stock price?

No, the real 900lb Gorilla is that IndyMac was not on the FDIC’s “troubled bank list”!

So here’s a thread to talk about the banks. Was the IndyMac failure the worst of it, or have we just seen the tip of the iceberg?

P.S. (RE: the title of the post - original comment (#10) / ongoing conversation / Sorry Ardell, I just couldn’t resist.)