At hearings of the Senate Permanent Sub-committee on Investigations looking into causes of the financial crisis, Kerry Killinger, CEO of the now-defunct bank Washington Mutual, contended that his company hadn’t been treated fairly. Documents were released that disclosed how he compared liquidity to oxygen—which, he complained, was provided to other banks in distress, but not to WaMu.
Well, according to reports of the hearings, it looks more like WaMu created such a toxic environment for itself, one so bad that you have to wonder how anyone within the organization could survive, and whether any amount of help—oxygen, liquidity, or otherwise—could have saved the company.
