Washington Mutual
Washington Mutual (WaMu) was a Seattle-based savings bank holding company offering banking, mortgage lending, and credit card services; following its 2008 failure, it was acquired by JPMorgan Chase, and its former domain wamu.com now redirects to Chase's online banking site.www.wamu.com
30
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19
EPISODES
18
PODCASTS
Search complete. 30 mentions across 19 episodes found for "Washington Mutual".
Oct 1, 2026
DonHOST
And it's almost as if, like, back in the days of Orange County Chopper, right, that you got the...
DonHOST
The Washington Mutual would come to them and have them make over a bike, and then let's say they could make 10 more and sell it just to collectors.
DonHOST
Like, that would be fun.
DonHOST
So this did happen with Mountain Dew.
Sam SchneiderHOST
Lehman Brothers just went out of business.
Sam SchneiderHOST
Washington Mutual went out of business.
Sam SchneiderHOST
Fannie and Freddie is being privatized or in receivership.
Sam SchneiderHOST
What's your mindset right then?
Blue GalHOST
September 29th, that the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 777.68 points, which was the then largest single day point loss.
Blue GalHOST
It followed the bankruptcies of Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual.
Blue GalHOST
Does anyone remember who was president on September 29th, 2008?
DriftglassHOST
It was Barack Obama, wasn't it?
BeauHOST
That's in a single day.
BeauHOST
It's the then largest single day point loss following the bankruptcies of Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual.
BeauHOST
There's lots of others that crumbled and fell after that as well.
BeauHOST
I remember that day clearly.
John MaxfieldGUEST
So you're dealing in an industry with almost no margin for error.
John MaxfieldGUEST
Like when Washington Mutual failed in October 2008 and was the largest bank failure in the country up to that point, its non-performing loan ratio was 3.6%.
John MaxfieldGUEST
So that means it got a 96.4% on its test and it didn't get a B, it failed.
John MaxfieldGUEST
And so what that means is, okay, so that means that like in banking, the decision making, the quality of decision making is incredibly important.
Rick OstermanGUEST
And then you had other banks that did fail.
Rick OstermanGUEST
You know, you had Washington Mutual, which was the largest bank failure in the history of the United States, over $300 billion, which failed.
John BovenziHOST
What happened there in terms of directors, officers, and accountants, lawyers?
Rick OstermanGUEST
Just as with all these cases, the FDIC did a thorough investigation of potential claims and did bring several cases against directors, officers.
22 MINS LATER
John BovenziHOST
may or may not have known, but it's part of the reason they became insolvent.
Tom WeissHOST
Yeah, so Rick, a couple of things that I wanted to sort of touch base on, and it has to do with the things we've already talked about on some of our series, which including a couple of guests that you know, but You know, we've seen things like John was involved in Keystone.
Tom WeissHOST
We had somebody involved with Penn Square, Washington Mutual, you mentioned, all these highlights from the past.
Tom WeissHOST
But they all had lots of early warning systems.
Gary MaurisGUEST
And one afternoon, my neighbor asked me for a beer.
Gary MaurisGUEST
And he was a loan officer at Washington Mutual.
Gary MaurisGUEST
Wamuu went down in the credit crisis.
Gary MaurisGUEST
But he said something really interesting to me.
Michael DermerGUEST
You know, we had just taken a decent-sized investment at that point, and now we're really building and scaling mode.
Michael DermerGUEST
Then Bear Stearns goes down, right? And then my three biggest clients were Washington Mutual, Countrywide Financial, and General Motors.
Michael DermerGUEST
A month later, two of them didn't exist.
Michael DermerGUEST
The hard part is, okay, I have close to 900 employees at this point, and you start doing some math.
Mark PhillipsHOST
Except when a black swan event occurs.
Mark PhillipsHOST
Black swan event.
Michael DermerGUEST
And so literally my three biggest clients were Washington Mutual, Countrywide Financial and General Motors.
Michael DermerGUEST
A month later, two of them didn't exist.
Andrei JikhSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Bear Stearns, for example, went to J.P. Morgan.
Andrei JikhSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Washington Mutual went to J.P. Morgan.
Andrei JikhSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Merrill Lynch went to Bank of America.
Andrei JikhSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
So did Countrywide.
Ron LangHOST
Bear Stearns, yeah.
Ron LangHOST
And then you then eventually had Lehman and Washington Mutual.
Ron LangHOST
There was a cascade effect that accelerated everything after Lehman went through bankruptcy.
Jeff KikelHOST
And I think it's still, if I remember correctly, the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.
9 more episodes mention Washington Mutual.
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