[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5813-5814]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            WASHINGTON MUTUAL--FRIENDS OF THE FAMILY NO MORE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Connolly of Virginia). The Chair 
recognizes the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Larsen) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Speaker, last week's Senate hearings on 
the failure of Washington Mutual painted a picture of a bank that sold 
risky mortgages to unsuspecting homeowners in order to rake in huge 
profits. Federal regulators turned a blind eye to these risky practices 
and allowed Washington Mutual to gamble with our future.
  Now, when I grew up in Arlington, Washington, Washington Mutual was 
known as a friend of the family. But their reckless behavior at the 
expense of consumers helped bring about the greatest financial crisis 
of our time. It was the largest bank failure in U.S. history and 
resulted in thousands of job losses in Northwest Washington State. 
Friend of the family no more.
  Federal regulators as well were asleep at the switch while Washington 
Mutual made tens of thousands of risky loans. Consumers suffered as big 
banks put the interests of big profits and big bonuses ahead of working 
families.
  Now, last week, we hear that the Securities and Exchange Commission 
filed a lawsuit against Goldman Sachs alleging misdealings in the 
mortgage securities collateralized debt obligation market. And today 
the House holds hearings on the fall of Lehman Brothers and the huge 
negative impact on middle class families from whom the risk seemed to 
be hidden.
  These revelations and the Washington Mutual hearings and the 
Inspectors General report provide a sobering reminder of the urgent 
need for financial regulatory reform. We must prevent a crisis like 
this from happening again by imposing strong oversight of financial 
firms like Washington Mutual, and protecting American consumers and 
American taxpayers from

[[Page 5814]]

unfair and abusive financial products like those in Washington Mutual's 
risky mortgages.
  So I urge the Senate to act quickly and pass financial regulatory 
reform so that the House and the Senate can get together to come up 
with an even stronger bill, and so that financial firms like Washington 
Mutual, that, in the future, if they want to drive off the cliff, they 
may be free to do so, but no longer will American families be trapped 
in the car as an innocent passenger.

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