"What We Need Is More Regulation....."

Oh yah. THAT'LL work. More regulation!

At over $300 billion in total assets, WaMu was OTS’s largest regulated institution and represented as much as 15 percent of OTS’s total assessment revenue from 2003 to 2008. OTS spent significant resources monitoring and examining WaMu. OTS conducted regular risk assessments and examinations that rated WaMu’s overall performance satisfactory until 2008. Those supervisory efforts also identified the core weaknesses that eventually led to WaMu’s failure – high-risk products, poor underwriting, and weak risk controls. . . .

OTS relied largely on WaMu management to track progress in correcting examiner-identified weaknesses and accepted assurances from WaMu management and its Board of Directors that problems would be resolved. OTS, however, did not adequately ensure that WaMu management corrected those weaknesses. The first time OTS took safety and soundness enforcement action against WaMu was in 2008 after the thrift started to incur significant losses.

IOW, the regulators were on WaMu like flies on manure, pointed to the areas which needed fixing, and did nada, zip, zero, about actually fixing them.

That's the very same OTS which was around when we had the S&L crisis, remember? The one which whitewashed Whitewater, the S&L run by the Clintons' best pal?

HT: McCain