What happened to WaMu?

Two excerpts from a NYTimes article on what happened to the troubled mortgage lender:

What this means:

“This institution was a big question mark about the health of the deposit fund,” Sheila C. Bair, the chairwoman of the F.D.I.C., said on a conference call Thursday. “It was unique in its size and exposure to higher risk mortgages and the distressed housing market. This is the big one that everybody was worried about.” She said that the bank’s rapidly deteriorating condition prompted regulators to seize it Thursday, and not on a Friday as is typical for bank closures.

Why it happened:

[Chief Executive Kerry K. Killinger's] goal was to transform what was once a sleepy Seattle thrift into the “Wal-Mart of Banking,” which would cater to lower- and middle-class consumers that other banks deemed too risky. It offered complex mortgages and credit cards whose terms made it easy for the least creditworthy borrowers to get financing, a strategy the bank extended in big cities, including Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. With this grand plan, Mr. Killinger built Washington Mutual into the sixth-largest bank in the United States.