Federal Regulators Faulted For Poor Bank Supervison

Regulators failed for years to properly supervise the giant savings and loan Washington Mutual, even as the company wobbled under the weight of risky subprime mortgages, a federal investigation has concluded.

The two agencies that oversaw Washington Mutual, the investigation found, feuded so much that they could not even agree to deem the company “unsafe and unsound” until Sept. 18, 2008.

By then, it was too late. A week later, amid a wave of deposit withdrawals, the government seized the bank and sold it to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion. It was by far the largest bank failure in American history.

From "U.S. Faults Regulators Over a Bank" by Sewell Chan in The New York Times, April 11, 2010.