It wasn’t bad loans, deregulation, poor management, or the credit crisis. It was WaMu’s commitment to a diverse workforce. So here’s hoping all the folks that pulled their money out of WaMu in the weeks leading up to the collapse put their money in safe racist, sexist, homophobic banks.

Via Queerty.

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17 replies on “What Caused WaMu’s Collapse?”

  1. Yes, hiring competent people instead of “diverse” people would be every shade of bigotry. Hiring people because they’re “diverse” isn’t bigoted at all.

    Earlier this morning I had to wait for three elevators because every opportunity I had was all white. Finally, this black dude showed up. It was a diverse ride.

  2. this is a fascinating look into the right-wing mindset about the financial collapse. so, the spin is: it’s all the fault of pandering to minorities.

    so, hiring minorities means throwing your business in the tiolet. lending sub-prime means lending to sub-humans. got it. *shudder*

  3. Jesus, reading the comments for that article was incredible. Look how many of them are about the “racist” ad campaign where the smart-alec black man mocks a group of old white men. Wish I were kidding.

  6. As always the statement says more about the person who made it than anything about the issue. In every crisis there is a myriad of factors involved, but these guys happen to point to the one thing that furthers their own prejudices. Idiots.

  7. @1 The problem with folks like this, Poe, is that there’s an implicit assumption that any hire of a “diverse” (aka non-straight, white male) person is by default a bad decision. That’s bullshit.

    Discriminating against non-“diverse” prospective employees is, I agree, wrongheaded. However, there’s nothing wrong with recruiting to attract QUALIFIED employement candidates from “diverse” backgrounds.

  9. What kills me is the use of that word, “diverse.” Nobody gives a fuck about true diversity. What they mean is race – black and hispanic, in particular. It wouldn’t bother me if employers were at least just honest about it.

  13. I couldn’t force myself to get all the way through that. At some point did they explain that hiring non-Jews in the banking industry was the real problem?

  15. The comments that this post links to are enlightening. I hadn’t realized that Diversity was so entirely to blame for the collapse of WAMU and indeed the entire worldwide financial market.

    And looking at the sea of white faces that is/was the WAMU management team I can see why diversity would be the number one suspect (https://www.wamu.com/about/corporateprofile/executivesandmanagement/default.asp).

    I’ll be damned if there isn’t a white woman on the senior executive team! She must have used her irrational capitalism-hating feminine wiles on the entire company to steer it into this industry and world-spanning crisis. And isn’t that just like a woman?

    And if it’s not her fault, then it must have been all those brown, black, and yellow employees with their plum low paying, zero strategic influence jobs. They obviously hatched this plan to screw whitey in-between saving for a mortgage deposit and donating blood to pay for gas so they could afford to get to work. Quite a feat considering that not a single one of their hue is on the company’s senior management team.

    Or it could have been all those swish men and butch women with their second-class relationships and deviant financial ways. They hate marriage and children and puppies and civilization so much that they wouldn’t blink at destroying our financial system after their disco nap.

    Thank god that through all the noisome claims of grasping avarice and vile corruption in the financial elite, some of us can still see the truth.

    That it’s the powerful non-white non-straight people who are to blame for this whole financial mess.

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