60 Minutes Exposes World Savings' Lending Practices That Ultimately Brought Down Wachovia

2/15/2009

posted by N. Sioris

Stumble It!

Kudos to Scott Pelley and 60 Minutes for another great investigative report about the culprits that brought down the U.S. economy and some of the largest banks in America.

How did the mortgage industry destroy itself and set off an economic collapse that ruined the finances of millions of Americans? Executives tend to hold themselves blameless, saying that no one could have seen the disaster coming.

Well, judge for yourself after you hear the story of Paul Bishop, who worked at the nation's second largest savings and loan. World Savings Bank was among the industry's most admired mortgage lenders. But Bishop says the kind of lending practices he saw were leading to a world of trouble that would ultimately result in billions in losses and a federal investigation.

"Three years before the housing market crash, Paul Bishop says he warned his superiors at World Savings that many of the mortgages they were granting were misleading and predatory.