ABOUT THIS EPISODE
In September 2008, as the collapse of Lehman Brothers shook confidence across the global financial system, Washington Mutual became the largest bank failure in U.S. history. In this episode, former FDIC Director of Resolutions and Receiverships Jim Wigand joins John Bovenzi and Tom Vice to provide a firsthand account of the frantic days leading up to WaMu's collapse and its sale to JPMorgan Chase. Together, they explain how regulators balanced rapidly deteriorating market confidence, mounting deposit withdrawals, and intense time pressure to engineer a resolution that protected depositors without resorting to an FDIC-funded bailout.
Beyond recounting the events themselves, the discussion explores the innovative resolution strategies developed during the crisis, the difficult policy choices surrounding uninsured deposits and creditor losses, and why the Washington Mutual transaction became a model for resolving large financial institutions. The lessons learned continue to shape bank resolution policy today and remain highly relevant as regulators confront the challenges of preserving confidence in an era of increasingly rapid bank runs.
