WaMu's part in the mess

The sacking of CEO Kerry Killinger at Washington Mutual and the federal seizure of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are part of a picture. America is cleaning up an economic mess.

The mess begins with a long weakness in American culture for too much living for today, and with the notion that houses are investments that can be pumped like oil wells, and that mortgages can be sold like $19.95 gimmicks on television. It includes not only WaMu and other lenders, with their low-documentation "liar loans" and 1-percent-option adjustable-rate mortgages, but also Fannie and Freddie with their looks-as-good-as-Treasuries investment paper. Somehow a product that was supposed to last 30 years became as perishable as an ice cream sundae.

Our central bank played a role in that. Under Chairman Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve System provided the helium for the bubble several years ago by letting short-term interest rates sag nearly to zero. In his book "The Age of Turbulence," Greenspan said he thought he was creating homeownership. Actually, he was creating a bacchanalia of finance, all while folks said he was a maestro.

Then Killinger. With the demise in the 1980s of Seafirst, Rainier, People's and Seattle Trust, Killinger emerged in the 1990s as the city's most prominent banker. He was admirably involved and community-spirited, and also extremely highly paid: In 2007 he took down $14.4 million. Under Killinger, Washington Mutual became the Starbucks of banking, spreading offices all across America. And then he burned the coffee without ever seeming to fully realize it.

For three years, Killinger has been talking about the downturn in housing as if the bank were prepared for it, then that it would emerge quickly from it, then that it would profit by it, and as late as July that it was "making headway" toward surviving it. All the while the stock slid from $41.73 a share to $4.12.

Focus not on Killinger — he's gone — but on Washington Mutual's board of directors, which waited an astonishingly long time to defend the interests of the shareholders they represent.

The mess had many makers.