Banker speaking here.

What you have is a number of folks at the big banks that thought they were smarter than everyone else, so they built a house of cards that fell.

Us folks in the little community banks saw what was going on and decided to stay out of it, because when we looked at the entire process, it didn't make sense. Maybe we "lacked the vision" or "weren't smart enough" to understand the products, hedges, and such.

WAMU's stock has lost about 88% of its 52 week high value, and they have lost money, lots of it, and will continue to hemorage more of it. We have lost 21% of our 52 week high stock value, and continue to be very profitable, even with some net interest margin compression. Net interest margin is how community banks make their money, while big banks make it elsewhere. Unfortunately, our stock gets lumped into all bank stocks.

We saw the writing on the wall, just like the tech boom, and every other fad scheme to make money over the past 20 years. Take this into account when the next craze to make money overnight rears its ugly head.

I guess we weren't that dumb afterall, not making a single sub-prime loan. Looks like the smartest guys in the room really weren't.

We are the most regulated industry in the US, and yet people in the big banks still figure out a way to screw it up.