A detailed, instructive account of a bank failure far away from the power centers of New York City.
A welcome new addition to the increasingly crowded shelf of books about banking failures during the past five years.
Wall Street Journal reporter Grind began covering Seattle-based Washington Mutual while employed at the Puget Sound Business Journal. When WaMu went out of business in 2008, it qualified as the largest bank failure in American history. Grind chronicles the mostly proud 110-year performance of the bank, tracing the failure in large part to the increasingly reckless management decisions of chief executive Kerry Killinger. The author begins in 1981, when WaMu's outside lawyer Lou Pepper reluctantly began running the daily activities of the troubled bank. Pepper was a likable man, perceived as a smart, fair boss. He helped save WaMu by converting it into a publicly held stock company, owned by its shareholders. When Pepper retired, Killinger stepped in as his predecessor. For a while he was a cautious steward. As the housing market heated up, however, Killinger and his management cohorts decided to ride the bubble by making unwise home loans. As at other mortgage lenders, the decision makers seemed unreasonably optimistic that the bubble would never burst. Despite warnings from his staff and from two federal bank regulatory agencies, Killinger continued to expand the mortgage-loan business despite the poor credit ratings of borrower after borrower. Grind takes readers inside the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of Thrift Supervision, sometimes-warring U.S. government agencies, as their top executives argued whether WaMu could be saved. During that debate, Jamie Dimon, chief executive at JPMorgan Chase, agreed to purchase the diminishing nontoxic assets of WaMu.
A detailed, instructive account of a bank failure far away from the power centers of New York City.Pub Date: June 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1792-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
Popcorn's ``click'' has nothing to do with either feminist consciousness or the PC mouse. Rather, for the social-trend prognosticator extraordinaire, it defines finding your proper slot in a rapidly changing world. For Popcorn, this involves identifying some new trends and occasionally reminding us how right-on she was with her past predictions in The Popcorn Report (also coauthored with Marigold). How can you click? Popcorn counts the ways. You can click by Wildering (not to be confused with wilding), a kind of fantasy adventure; you can click by Anchoring, or pursuing spirituality; you can click by volunteering.. Popcorn's not one for fine distinctions here—megachurches will do as well for spiritual seekers as more intimate locations. The trend is everything: Just pick one and ride it until you feel yourself click into place. (First printing of 150,000)
Pub Date: April 24, 1996
ISBN: 0-88730-694-2
Page Count: 480
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
A slick, selective, and provocative history of postWW II management from a New Age missionary who makes no secret of his commitment to the arguable notion that corporations exist to change the world—for the better. In his engagingly digressive chronicle, Kleiner (co-editor of News That Stayed News: Ten Years of CoEvolution Quarterly, 1986) focuses on the square pegs and odd ducks who wanted to reform rather than repudiate the commercial concerns or institutions that employed them. Among those whose ideas eventually made at least some difference, he singles out Douglas McGregor and other academics, consultants, and executives influenced by the group- dynamics canon of National Training Labs (the originator of T- Groups, which encourage lower-echelon personnel to participate in workplace decisions). He goes on to recount how Saul Alinsky unleashed activist shareholders against Eastman Kodak in 1967; the resultant movement has provided a platform for hosts of agitators, ranging from church investors and Ralph Nader to Leon Sullivan. On the right, the author observes, economist Milton Friedman helped make a name for himself by insisting that the only social responsibility of business was to increase profits. In the meantime, Kleiner reports, Stanford Research Institute scholars were conducting serious experiments on the performance-enhancing properties of LSD, and NTL held symposia and other gatherings with Esalen Institute, a series of encounters that hastened on-the-job programs addressing gender and race issues. Covered as well are such counterculture entrepreneurs as the millenarian planners at Royal Dutch Shell, establishment moles who, in one memorable scenario, asserted: ``The future cannot be predicted; it can only be seen.'' A welcome if offbeat contribution to corporate literature, one that examines the communitarian possibilities of large multinational organizations rather than their presumptive failings and deficiencies.
Pub Date: May 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-385-41576-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
