The concentration of loans backed by the F.H.A. in areas of subpar family incomes is another warning flag, according to the study.
These include requiring daily, instead of quarterly, reporting of capital (many banks used to let it drop between reports), imposing tighter rules on the concentration of loans and auditing several hundred banks.
In June of that year, amid evidence that home prices were falling in some of the areas of California and Florida where WaMu had its greatest concentration of loans, Mr. Killinger was crowing that he had been right.
BUSINESS DAY An article on Wednesday about changes in the criteria of Standard & Poor's for rating bonds backed by residential mortgages referred incorrectly to changes in standards related to the geographic concentration of loans.
At the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank's sister institution that focuses on Latin America, the concentration of loans to Argentina and hence the potential cost of an Argentine default is much bigger.Second, if Argentina fails to pay up for more than a few months, prudence suggests that the World Bank will need to provide more against the risk of Argentina's loans.
Many of the failed banks followed a common trajectory of too-aggressive growth, hyper concentration of loans in commercial construction, and failure to properly administer loans.
The agencies fear that a real estate market decline could cause the closing of numbers of financial institutions with high concentrations of loans.
But heavy concentrations of loans to particular countries or industries that suffer widespread defaults can do so.
That includes tackling RBS's excessive concentrations of loans and long-standing fascination with absolute profits, not risk-adjusted returns.Reversing the second mistake, ABN, will take longer.
The agency is specifically looking at the way the companies reported their subprime mortgage portfolios and concentrations of loans extended to borrowers who offered little documentation.
