He was actually kicked upstairs in April of this year. I guess that makes sense because he, after all, is an expert in understanding management system weaknesses.

BTW, his official bio on the Freddie Mac website doesn’t mention WaMu at all:

Prior to coming to Freddie Mac, Romano served as senior vice president and chief credit risk officer and other executive positions at different major financial institutions including North American Mortgage Company in Tampa, Dime Savings Bank of NY, and with Citicorp’s Investment Bank.
http://www.freddiemac.com/bios/exec/romano.html

some one like Barry or Calculated Risk will provide you with much better information because they have knowledge and can write, then most reporters who needs to get sources to write. reporters can cover breaking news, but we can’t do analysis. we’re not allowed to, and we don’t have a capability.

Big Three auto makers as in a death spiral, a dying business. newspapers survived radio, TV, but not the freemium internet. Chris Anderson at Wired says if newspapers got rid of the paper editions, it would lose half of its cost, but 75% of its revenues. craig’s list and many other sites have already poached the ad revenues. car companies don’t buy ads in papers anymore. many people think papers are dying because of ideology, technology is the bigger killer.

not that it matters, though, w/this: “..if we had the skinny, then we would make money with it, instead of writing about it…”

check out http://www.spj.org/ethics.asp#

and, w/this: “i guess i understand the media’s power (or lack of it) and its limitation.”

see:
A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will in time produce a people as base as itself.
Joseph Pulitzer

An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery.
Joseph Pulitzer

I am deeply interested in the progress and elevation of journalism, having spent my life in that profession, regarding it as a noble profession and one of unequaled importance for its influence upon the minds and morals of the people.
Joseph Pulitzer
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/joseph_pulitzer.html#

for starters.

and w/this: “but then newspapers are like the Big Three auto makers …”
you mean controlled by the ‘Government’?
http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=Operation+Mockingbird+The+mighty+Wurlitzer

i’ve had many careers and the first was a journo, a general assignment dog, then a biz journo, before i became a trader during the Internet boom, then mortgage broker. (two bubbles for me.) reporters are writers, we can only repeat what we are told. if we had the skinny, then we would make money with it, instead of writing about it. i guess i understand the media’s power (or lack of it) and its limitation.

my grammar, typos are atrocious for a former reporter. i would make a better biz reporter now from what i know through experience, but then newspapers are like the Big Three auto makers …

see: “My Story (First written in 2005)

Hello and welcome to the expressions of my frustration with Washington Mutual Bank. I hope this information helps to direct you away from doing business with them until they improve their operations, policies, and customer service.

The behavior of a business usually reflects the guidance and thinking of the people at the top. Because of this
I fully expect that problems and dissatisfaction in one area is typically reflective of what you will experience in other areas of the business. Because so many people have had problems with Washington Mutual, it is clearly in their corporate culture.

In 2002, I decided to reduce the amount of direct mail I was getting by calling all the companies that were sending the stuff to me and asking them to stop sending it. Simple, right? For those of you that don’t know, it is your full and legal right by Federal law to ask someone to stop sending you direct mail, and they must stop! Most of the organizations I contacted were more than happy to take me off of their mailing list. Now, being a homeowner, mortgage refinance solicitations make up about 30% of all junk mail I get. Thirty percent! That is HUGE! Washington Mutual is by far the largest abuser of this form of direct mail!

When I first started contacting WaMu to stop sending me the mortgage refinance junk mail, I actually already had a home loan with WaMu. That I already had a mortgage with WaMu and yet brokers from all over California were sending me refinance offers just baffles me. At that time I was also registered with their privacy department to not receive any offers from them. For those of you that don’t remember, earlier this decade, financial institutions lobbied for and got the ability to share your sensitive financial information with outside entities for marketing and promotional purposes. What they had to do to get this was to agree to send opt-out notices to you where you could opt out of all information sharing as well as whether you wanted to receive any solicitations from them…”
http://www.washingtonmutualsucks.org/
as a + http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/search/search.html?text=Top+50+mailers&sort=Hits+ASC

meaning, these dudes were casting such an indiscriminating Net, it is little wonder that their by-catch was less than Grade A..
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/indiscriminate%20

hue,

the financial press doesn’t have ‘inside info’ b/c it seldom falls in their lap..
most of these Journos are totally brain dread, and wouldn’t know the difference between ‘following a lead’, and ‘burying the lede’..