The Lost Bank - by Kirsten Grind (Paperback)

About the Book

Based on reporting for which the author was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Gerald Loeb Award, this book traces the rise and spectacular fall of Washington Mutual.

Book Synopsis

An award-winning reporter chronicles the calamitous story of Washington Mutual, the single-largest bank failure in American history, in this fast-paced, compelling, and gripping saga of greed and excess.

During the most dizzying days of the financial crisis, Washington Mutual, a bank with hundreds of billions of dollars in its coffers, suffered a crip-pling bank run. The story of its final, brutal collapse in the autumn of 2008, and its controversial sale to JPMorgan Chase, is an astonishing account of how one bank lost itself to greed and mismanagement, and how the entire financial industry--even the entire country--lost its way as well.

Written as compellingly as the finest fiction, The Lost Bank introduces readers to the regulators and the bankers, the home buyers and the lenders who together created the largest bank failure in American history. The result is a magisterial and gripping account of the incredible rise and the precipitous collapse of not only an institution but of trust, fortunes, and the marketplaces for risk across the world.

Review Quotes

"The Lost Bank is a superbly written, insider account of the collapse of Washington Mutual, among the more surprising downfalls of the financial crisis. It's a story of hubris, ambition and poor judgment that entertains but also is a disturbing coda to the difficult period, providing enduring lessons about how a group of executives who predicted the housing collapse were somehow felled by it."--Gregory Zuckerman, author of The Greatest Trade Ever

"Wall Street Journal reporter Kirsten Grind deftly restores the 'lost bank' to its rightful place in the annals of financial disasters... The clarity and humility of the writing is refreshing."--Tom Braithwaite, The Financial Times

"A detailed, instructive account of a bank failure far away from the power centers of New York City."--Kirkus Reviews

"A fantastic story... Every American should read about it..."--John Hockenberry, "The Takeaway"

"Almost a Barbarians-esque view..."--Andrew Ross Sorkin, "Squawk Box"

"An exhaustively researched and well-written account of one of the widely ignored chapters of the great financial crisis. Grind does an excellent job of bringing the complex story to life, and capturing the sense of drama and the impact on peoples' lives. It also casts a spotlight on the role of the FDIC, which has not received as much attention as it should have done. An insightful and well-written book." --Gillian Tett, author of Fool's Gold

"An eye-opening book."--Booklist

"Grind... has produced a compelling case study of corporate incompetence and of how regulators are politically captured by the businesses they are meant to oversee."--Steven Pearlstein, The Washington Post

"If indeed this book had been fiction, it would have been branded unrealistic, outlandish, and out of the realm of reality. It is, however, a factual account with endnotes, references, and detailed documentation of sources used. It is an incredible story... The book reads very much like a novel and holds the reader's interest."--William J. Taylor, ABA Banking Journal

"In The Lost Bank, Grind achieves the best of the business journalist's calling, not only reporting the WaMu disaster in clear, compelling prose for the general reader, but also offering new information and details that may surprise those who think they know the story... [A] sparkling achievement."--Jon Talton "The Seattle Times"

"Kirsten Grind's dogged reporting lays bare a tale of out-of-control salesmen and executive-level gamblers who transformed one of America's most respected banks into a weapon of mass financial destruction. The Lost Bank is a page-turning read that exposes the Wild West banking tactics that harmed customers, workers and the nation as a whole."--Michael W. Hudson, author of The Monster

"Lucid, entertaining . . . One of the best accounts... of the Great Crash as it played out on a human scale."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"The transformation of Washington Mutual from folksy community lender to reckless 2000-branch behemoth is one of the epic stories of American finance. The bank that banned potted plants to save money in the 1980s became the bank that hired white-suited 'evangelists' to praise its go-go mortgages with screams of 'WaMu-lujah.' Grind tells this boom-bust story without lapsing into melodrama or malice, and her tale is all the more powerful for that." --Sebastian Mallaby, author of More Money Than God

"What a marvelous book this is, so well-reported and so well-told by a writer who really threw herself into telling her story. And what an incredible tale that turns out to be, a once-beloved bank felled by greed, hubris, and a shocking disregard of all the obvious warning signs portending the financial disaster that was about to hit all of us. The life-savings of shareholders go up in smoke, a long-standing institution is done in by a new breed of short-sited executives, and meanwhile there was the havoc caused by all those subprime mortgages Washington Mutual, one of the country's more aggressive and reckless lenders, pushed through the financial system. The Lost Bank would be a joy to read if not for the Greek tragedy that unspools vividly and painfully before your eyes. A first-rate job by a first-rate journalist."--Gary Rivlin, author of Broke, USA

About the Author

Kirsten Grind is an enterprise reporter for The Wall Street Journal, where she has worked since 2012. She has received more than a dozen national awards for her work, including a Pulitzer Prize finalist citation and a Loeb Award. Her first book, The Lost Bank, was named the best investigative book of 2012 by the Investigative Reporters & Editors association, and is coauthor of Happy at Any Cost. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.