Imagine how badly our economy would be decimated if all these guys had to move to Singapore:
[A] 2006 WaMu retreat produced one of the more cringe-worthy moments of the mortgage meltdown: Lenders, on the eve of their industry’s collapse, singing “I Like Big Bucks” to the tune of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s 1992 hip-hop hit “Baby Got Back.” […..]“I like big bucks and I cannot lie/You mortgage brothers can’t deny,” sang the WaMu rappers.
The presentation, which included cheerleaders moving in time to the music, and choreographed moves by the singers, continued:
“That when the dough roles in like you’re printin’ your own cash/
And you gotta make a splash/
You just spends/
Like it never ends/
Cuz you gotta have that big new Benz/
All of that bling you’re wearin’/
Shining so bright peoples starin’/
It’s crazy, I gotta ski Aspen/
That’s all I’m askin’”
Bulworth
C’mon now. Digging up this kind of stuff is just gonna make these great producers of ours go galt. Then we’ll really be in a fix.
Besides, only 47% of the riff-raff pay income taxes. Also, too.
mai naem
Yeah, b..utttt they worked hard for their money. Bobo told me himself. They put in more hours than those lazy schmucks that they gave those loans to. And today they are going to be punished for making all that money.
licensed to kill time
Blerg. I hope they lost all their big bucks in the meltdown and are now living on Cup o’ Noodles and riding the bus and fearing for the one piece of bling they managed to save.
That’s all I’m askin’.
The Moar You Know
I hate these people.
I can’t even be snarky about it or anything. I hate them and all I can do is write about how much I hate them, since I can’t personally give each and every one of them cancer.
Osprey
WHAT.
THE.
FUCK.
I used to bank with WAMU (they bought out my local branch). Man I feel….dirty right now.
And…cheerleaders?
Just…I’m as white as they come (German/Irish), but man, fuckin’ white people are weird. (gotta assume so since I don’t think any self-respecting African-American man would would come up with something this stupid).
Hobelhouse
Sometimes i really feel like I know where Lenin was coming from.
cleek
they ain’t frontin, they’re just encouragin
the playas to get their cash a-tricklin
down on the heads of the masses
who too lazy to get off their asses
too dumb to take some classes
playa money make the world spin
make the honeys jiggle make Mr Bankman grin
proles just wanna piece of that action
wanna seize the means of production
take it all from the productive
make everybody live like they live
soshalizum makes em lazy
want to suck on the rich mans gravy
or something
A Mom Anon
@The Moar You Know: You and me both. When someone like that can rake in millions and my son’s school is going to have to cut out art classes,half the music programs,lose most of the electives that are any fun at all up class sizes to 40 kids and sell off 100 buses before next year,I really want to hurt someone badly. Fuck them all,and not in a nice and special way either.
I swear,sometimes I think the only thing that will change anything is for a few CEO and hedge fund managers heads to show up on pikes. It’s really like they’re DARING someone to stop them.
Fergus Wooster
This is completely in character. I used to work for these assholes. They’d have pep rallies demanding “Go Big or Go Home”, complete with T-Shirts.
We tried to comply by going big, but our efforts were thwarted by them laying us off.
In 2004, after botching their interest-rate hedges, Killinger decided to lay off all Business and Commercial Banking. (Note that there is no connection between the two.) Wanted to refocus on their core business of subprime and HELOC’s. 1,000 of us were laid off via conference call. We had to sign a one-year non-disparagement agreement to collect our severance.
Come October 2005, the internetz exploded with a thousand “WaMu blows”.
Osprey
And Kudos to the Office Space reference (assuming that’s where you got that song from).
Bob K
@ A Mom Anon
It’s almost like you’re channeling Madame DeFarge. Creeps me out like staring at a Picture of Shelly Bachmann. Sometimes Shelly, she looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. And, you know, the thing about Shelly… she’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When she comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be living… until she bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. (Sarah Palin giving a speech?)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Defarge
Dork
I hope they asked Mix for the right to parody his song.
Gus
I pray to god that no one recorded that. The CIA would be tempted to use it in
tortureenhanced interrogation.Fergus Wooster
This would have been around the time they provided a second mortgage on OJ’s house. In the business, we call that a “character loan”.
businessinsider.com/washington-mutuals-oj-simpson-loan-fiasco-2009-10
Incidentally, the fact that he was subject to a wrongful death judgment that would be ahead of the bank didn’t phase them. Tools.
MikeJ
@Dork: Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569
Chat Noir
I used to work for a big corporation and WaMu was one of our customers. They used to issue RFPs with really short, unrealistic deadlines just because they could (their purchasing person would tell our account guy, “well, this is your business, so you should have all the information you need right at your fingertips” which was never the case). Natch, they ended up buying from our main competitor.
Sounded like the hubris was institutional there.
asiangrrlMN
When I have time (which is not right now), I will do a second verse–although, cleek did a kick ass job of it, I must say.
These asshats make me want to beat the snot out of them. Goddamn it.
Crashman
@Chat Noir: @Fergus Wooster: This is some good inside baseball stuff. It’s interesting to get a window into what that world was like. Keep ’em coming.
Loneoak
This is why I hate us for our freedoms.
Fergus Wooster
@Crashman: Thanks. They were twisted – they wanted their banking centers to be like retail stores. Then they built up a book of solid, reputable commercial lending – and got rid of it, presumably because it didn’t carry the egregious fees, prepayment penalties, and ARM adjustments that the core business of predatory home lending provided.
Oh, and they insisted on referring to themselves as “WaMoolians”. No shit.
Warren Terra
By what failure of imagination was this line not something like “your mortgage brokers can’t deny”?
rreay
I thought Sinfest was a joke.
sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2952
elmo
Now, where did I put the pitchfork sharpener and the tar ladle? Dammit, see, that’s why the proles don’t make the big bux — we’re always caught unprepared!
dan
Oh, to be in that room with a MAC 10.
ItAintEazy
elmo
I have my pitchfork soaking and rusting in my bucket of brine water.
Sloegin
Moved to Singapore?
Imprisoned in Singapore, maybe.
russell
They were being diligent.
I can’t even get mad about this crap anymore. It’s like getting mad about your cat eating a bird. They can’t help it, they’re just irresponsible, pathologically greedy f*cks.
It’s their nature.
What I want are new top marginal tax rates of 40-45% on all income above a half million bucks. If they have the dough to throw big parties, they have to dough to pony up for all of the fucking damage they’ve done.
If party time is over for the rest of us, then party time is over for them, too. They had their fun, now they can share in the hangover.
If it’s gonna be them vs. us, I want my pound of flesh.
It ain’t personal, it’s business. They should be able to get their heads around that.
scav
@elmo: Rusty and dull works. The ladle though IS a problem, although I guess we could just dunk them physically into the bucket of hot tar. You didn’t mention the pillow for the feathers. Pulling them off the birds at the last minute just takes too much time and using the whole birds just looks silly.
bemused
@The Moar You Know:
That’s too easy. Better that they would all have to go work in the coal mines like Massey’s. Of course they eventually would get cancer or some other coal related diseases but much later after years enjoying their new careers barring an unfortunate, sudden mine “accident” that no one could possibly have prevented occurred first.
Jay in Oregon
@dan:
Fixed. :)
JGabriel
@Gus:
I was kind of hoping they did record it. It would make great Congressional evidence for bank regulation. Imagine the public’s reaction:
.
dan
No, Jay in Oregon, I didn’t want to spend that kind of time with them.
Citizen Alan
I want guillotines. I want big, fuck-off bloody guillotines. We can rip out that god-damned golden bull that’s in front of the NYSE (you know, the one that looks like it came straight out of The Ten Commandments), and install it there, so all the titans of industry will be reminded what will happen to them if they screw us again.
ericblair
@Chat Noir:
So instead of giving their suppliers enough lead time to put together decent proposals and let themselves make the best decision possible and get the best value for their money, they rushed it through just to be dicks. But, but I thought businesses were so efficient and logical and shit and the Free Market fixed everything! Ya mean it’s not true?
Just joking: I work for a large company. It just makes me giggle when people actually believe shit like that: the biggest organization these people ever worked at must have been a lemonade stand.
Sentient Puddle
In financial reform wonkery news, we’re getting a peek at Blanche Lincoln’s language on derivatives. Article, and a sticker quote:
Well hot damn! Anything that could unnerve the hell out of Wall Street is a good start! Still don’t have the full language of her proposal, but here’s what they say:
Or in short, Glass-Stegall…and then some. I’m rather impressed.
EvolutionaryDesign
The suicide booths on Futurama are looking more appealing by the day.
Chat Noir
@ericblair:
Bingo. It was difficult to put together a good proposal under these circumstances. However, our own messed up internal processes didn’t help either.
Bwah-ha-ha-ha. If only…
arguingwithsignposts
@bemused:
I like the cut of your jib, bemused. A fine idea. Maybe we assign them to all the “Dirtiest Jobs,” and force them to work in their Brooks Bros. suits!
Comrade Dread
We really need to bring back the stocks in this country so good citizens could walk down Wall St. and kick every one of these mother****ers right in the balls on their way to work or sightseeing.
Fergus Wooster
@Sentient Puddle:
This is really good news. Even if the banks didn’t have to spin off the derivatives activity (which I’m betting won’t make the final bill), her requirement that derivatives trade publicly like equities is going to put serious hurt on the banks.
The big banks make an absolute killing providing over-the-counter interest rate and commodity price hedges. Typically loan agreements require that any hedging be done with the lender, or with the syndicate in the event of more than one lender.
Now with a regulated, public market, customers are going to see how badly they’ve been getting reamed by the bank-controlled OTC market.
Plus we’ll be able to monitor futures activity, so hopefully a massive speculative boom will be less likely (see crude oil prices, 2008).
WereBear (itouch)
No one becomes a banksta out of humanitarian ideals. Even Jimmy Stewart in It’s A Wonderful Life.
kay
@Fergus Wooster:
Very good. There’s a t-shirt slogan in there somewhere.
Fergus Wooster
@Kay: Thanks! Maybe: Was Going Big until you sent us Home.
I say again: WaMoolians. That tells you everything you need to know about that organization.
Cervantes
Imagination has nought to do with it; “decimated” means “reduced by 10%.”
Felonious Wench
@Fergus Wooster: “They’d have pep rallies demanding “Go Big or Go Home”, complete with T-Shirts.
We tried to comply by going big, but our efforts were thwarted by them laying us off.”
Damn, that made my day.
Mnemosyne
@Fergus Wooster:
I think you mean WaMooligans — rhymes with hooligans.
/pedant
kay
@Mnemosyne:
They had to call it that. WaMOO. In case anyone remembered what “mutual banks” were supposed to do, and why they were given charters:
Mumphrey
Am I the only one who pines for the days when bankers and industrialists were just as rapacious and destructive, but far more tasteful and reserved? At this point it’s gotten to where the money they’ve stolen almost doesn’t bother me as much as the way they crow and preen about all the money they’ve stolen.
Andrew Mellon was about as big a dick as any of these guys, but somehow I don’t think anybody would have found him singing about what a rich badass he was.
I know about bills of attainder and all, but, jeez, maybe we should pass a one-off amendment to the Constitution so we could throw all the bankers in jail.
Warren Terra
@rreay:
That Sinfest cartoon was pure win, and incredibly apt.
salacious crumb
I wonder how all these bankers dressed up? pimps and ho’s garb?
SkepticRising
Why is it that conservatives are so unutterably bad at this?
SkepticRising
@ericblair: They didn’t set the short deadline on the RFPs just to be dicks. The buyer had lunch with the preferred supplier and gave them a heads up on the recs so they could submit the proposal in less time than the competitors. Then the buyer got a free trip to a time share on Maui.
Polar Bear Squares
Any reference to Scarface or the Geto Boys must be met with swift praise.
Nice one, DougJ.