Recent Stories with tag bank

The good news is that my phone expects the temperature to reach 78 degrees today. Let's focus on that for a moment. On Monday, the clouds should be back, and the city will be announcing budget cuts.

Friday afternoon brought another bank seizure by government regulators: Washington First International Bank was sold to Pasadena's East West Bank, reported the PSBJ. Commercial real estate gone bad. That would seem to make Jon Talton's Friday morning post about the possibility of a Seattle commercial real estate crash required reading. Goldman Sachs thinks our residential real estate is about lose 20 percent in value, so maybe put the money back into the mattress.

Lots of transportation news this week: a federal judge said "Oh hell no" to Patty Murray's attempt restore King County Metro special service to Mariners games. Metro is also gearing up for union negotiations by releasing incomplete information on bus operator compensation (and ignoring media requests for a fuller picture). And the King County Ferry District would like you not to notice that Argosy Cruises ran the West Seattle Water Taxi for cheaper.... (more)

Former WaMu CEO Kerry Killinger

It's a big day for #WaMu on Twitter, as former executives testify before a Senate subcommittee. The PSBJ's Kirsten Grind--part of a Pulitzer finalist team providing ongoing coverage of the WaMu meltdown--is live blogging the hearings.

Early on, the testimony is a study in blame-shifting: people told the WaMu board about the risk from subprime loans, government regulators knew about it but were too hands-off, it wasn't my job to stop it. Here's the second panel of testifiers. Sample awkward exchange:

Beck: I understood there was fraud.

Levin: Shouldn't you have checked to make sure the fraudulent mortgages weren't part of the securities? Isn't that part of your job?

Beck: No, it's not. The post-closing review would be conducted by the operations department within the originations channel.

Sen. Carl Levin, committee chair, had 12 pages of opening remarks. The panel gathered 500 pages of "internal emails and reports," says Grind. The Seattle Times sums up the findings:

Internal company documents obtained by the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations show that despite concerns inside and outside WaMu that its loans were failing at exceptionally high rates and were riddled with fraud, the abuses continued right up to the collapse of the subprime market in 2007.

The Huffington Post goes into detail:

...in 2005, WaMu’s own internal investigation of two top-producing offices making loans in southern California found that fraud was out of control. At one office in Downey, Calif., 58 percent of mortgages were found to be fraudulent. At an office in Montebello, Calif., the rate was even higher: 83 percent.... (more)

Regular readers of The SunBreak are aware that a friend of mine had a traumatic roll-of-quarters experience with the Chase branch in the University District, back in November:

He stopped by the branch in the University Village to pick up a roll of quarters because he's paranoid about using his credit card in parking meters. He bought a roll for ten dollars, stepped outside to open up the roll, and discovered that he'd also bought a number of dimes, nickels, pennies, and Phillipine centavos.

As it happened, this week brought a return visit to the same branch (via drive-thru) for quarters. The teller proffered (via the drive-thru transport device) one of the self-packed rolls that customers bring in, and my friend, remembering his last experience, balked.

"Can you open it?" he asked. Behind the window, the teller gave him a look that translated as, "Um--no!" He explained that he only asked because of the last time with the centavos. "The last time, you guys said if I left with the quarters, it was my responsibility." The teller agreed it was. "Can I just get one of the machine-filled rolls?" The teller was disinclined to acquiesce.... (more)

A friend just called, practically spitting bullets. He stopped by the Chase branch in the University Village to pick up a roll of quarters because he's paranoid about using his credit card in parking meters. He bought a roll for ten dollars, stepped outside to open up the roll, and discovered that he'd also bought a number of dimes, nickels, pennies, and Philippine centavos.

Because banks are too busy to count change, they simply measure the rolls of quarters people bring in. A scammer had padded both ends of the roll with quarters, and filled in the middle with an assortment of coins that in width and weight brought the roll to the right specifications.

Whoops! So back into the bank, only to learn that Chase observes a strict "caveat quarter" rule--once you walk out the door, that's your money. No returns. "No, no, look," protests my friend, "I just gave you ten dollars and you gave me less than that." A manager is summoned. A customer's long history with--well, not Chase, but with the previous bank, a friend... (more)