Nate Thoma is 33 year-old with “scruffy beard” who lives in Queens and sometimes wears plaid shirts. He’s also a sometime day trader who has “about $500,000 in investments” and in fall 2008, saw his investment in Washington Mutual wiped out after regulators seized the bank. Thoma spent “weeks in front of his Scottrade account, trying to figure out how to recoup money he had lost” and after studying WaMu’s capital structure “saw an opportunity to make it back.” Continue reading »
Washington Mutual
In the first day of Senate testimony on the collapse of Washington Mutual, we learn the bank knew about rampant mortgage fraud going on in its various branch offices. The fraud includes the typical shenanigans like lying on income statements of borrowers, fake employment statements, etc. Continue reading »
You might think JPMorgan Chase got everything in the Washington Mutual deal, which briefly accomplished the impossible by doubling the number of Chase branches in New York City. But the wily Jamie Dimon isn’t finished: He wants WaMu to pay him for the pleasure of owning their crappy bank.
JPMorgan and the “carcass” of WaMu’s parent are fighting over the scraps. The former thinks $1.9 billion was way too much for WaMu, preferring that the latter effectively pay it $2 billion for taking the bank of its hands. The carcass thinks that money should go to its creditors. The courts have yet to decide.
The WaMu name on the 5,000-seat theater at Madison Square Garden is likely to change because of the seizure of Washington Mutual by federal regulators on Thursday.
The nation’s largest savings and loan — which came to symbolize the excesses of mortgage lending — was sold almost in its entirety to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion.
There was no word on Friday if the Chase name — which is also on the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball stadium in Phoenix — will replace WaMu or if it will go without a name until another corporation makes a deal.
Hard not to gloat, isn’t it? I suppose Dimon better not laugh too loudly, however. Or the Citi clan, for that matter. You people could be next.
WaMu’s Troubles Likely to Mean Name Change at Garden
