title: Flyboys (film)

text: After escorting another bomber run on the ammunition depot Jametz, in which Lowry is forced to shoot himself when his plane catches fire, Rawlings takes off to exact revenge on the Black Falcon. Rawlings is attacked by multiple enemy planes, but Jensen, who had broken down earlier but decided to keep flying, helps him shoot down all the enemy fighters except the Black Falcon. With the enemy fighters shot down, Rawlings engages in a dogfight with the Falcon. After being bested in combat and wounded, Rawlings comes alongside and fatally shoots the Black Falcon with his pistol. Rawlings and his squadron return to base.


title: Flyboys (film)

text: The film ends by showing what the survivors did after the battle. Jensen flies for the rest of the war; returning to Nebraska, he receives a hero's welcome. Skinner enlists in the US Army but is kept from flying due to his race; he later joins the Airmail Service. Beagle marries an Italian woman and starts a flying circus. Rawlings goes to Paris but does not find Lucienne. He builds one of the largest ranches in Texas, but never flies again.


title: Flyboys (film)

text: In writing the original drafts that formed the basis of the final screenplay, Tony Bill made an effort to incorporate the real-life adventures of a number of American World War I expatriates who served in both the Lafayette Escadrille and the Lafayette Flying Corps, although pseudonyms were used throughout.


title: Flyboys (film)

text: The casting of Franco in an action feature at the time was considered a "stepping stone" to his rise as marquee player and movie star.


title: Flyboys (film)

text: The film was shot on location in the United Kingdom primarily in spring 2005 although principal photography continued on into the summer. The trench scenes were shot in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, the same location used for "Band of Brothers" and "Saving Private Ryan". The airfield and aerial shots were filmed on and above RAF Halton (near Aylesbury) where hangars, mess rooms and officers quarters were built adjacent to Splash Covert Woods. All scenery and props were removed when filming ended. The interior shots of the chateau were filmed at RAF Halton's officers' mess, Halton House. Some interiors and studio green-screen work were filmed at Elstree Film and Television Studios in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire.


title: Flyboys (film)

text: The film was financed privately outside the standard Hollywood studio circuit by a group of filmmakers and investors, including producer Dean Devlin and pilot David Ellison, son of Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison; both spent more than $60 million of their own money to make and market "Flyboys".


title: Flyboys (film)

text: The Nieuport 17s featured in the film included four replicas built by Airdrome Aeroplanes, an aircraft company based outside of Kansas City, Missouri. The other aircraft used were a mix of authentic aircraft (the Nieuport 17 that Franco used throughout filming was an original combat aircraft from Kermit Weeks' collection in Florida, specially brought over for the film) and replicas including Nieuport 17s, a sole Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter and a number of Fokker Dr.I replicas.


title: Flyboys (film)

text: In preparing for the starring role, Franco took flying lessons. All the other main actors, except Jean Reno, were filmed in actual aircraft in anticipation of using the aerial footage in final scenes. (Reno pointedly refused the offer, with a "No thanks, I'm afraid of flying." admission). Very little other than Franco's closeups in a cockpit ultimately made it to the screen.


title: Flyboys (film)

text: "Flyboys" has been widely criticized for its lack of historical accuracy. The most serious lapse was the blending of the Lafayette Escadrille with the Lafayette Flying Corps, a sub-unit where the real-life Eugene Bullard actually served.


title: Flyboys (film)

text: Various details of World War I fighter aircraft technology shown in the film were inaccurate. For example, the aircraft engines in the CGI scenes are pictured as not moving. On the rotary engines used in some early aircraft, the engine case and cylinders rotated, with the crankshaft bolted to the airframe. The spinning of the cylinders improved cooling and allowed for fewer parts, making the engine simpler and lighter. The propeller was attached to the crankcase (the opposite of radial engines). One operating rotary engine appears in a scene that takes place in the repair hangar. The Nieuport and Fokker aircraft used in the movie are flying replicas built with new radial engines, due to the unavailability of original-type rotary engines. This detail can be briefly seen in the final combat when the black Fokker is taking off after Rawling's ground attack at the German airfield.


title: Flyboys (film)

text: In the scene where Beagle is rescued, some of the German soldiers in the trench were shown wearing the Pickelhaube. By 1916, the helmet was no longer in use by frontline soldiers. It had been replaced with the Stahlhelm, which significantly reduced the number of head injuries suffered by German soldiers.


title: Flyboys (film)

text: In many scenes with Lucienne, Rawling's aircraft has a British roundel rather than a French one, which have red at the outer border.


title: Flyboys (film)

text: Another error is that the American pilots are operating the Nieuport 17, while the Germans are operating the Fokker Dr.I, which entered front line service some time after the Nieuport 17 was no longer operational.


title: Flyboys (film)

text: The singular use of Fokker Triplanes, which were not in widespread operational use, is contentious and almost every Triplane was also painted red in the film, indicating that the Triplane was in Jasta 11, the "all-red" unit. Despite this the remaining pre-production aircraft, designated Dr.I, were delivered to Jasta 11 and Idflieg issued a production order for 100 triplanes in September, followed by an order for 200 in November 1917. On the director/producer commentary track for the DVD release, Producer Dean Devlin noted that they were aware the predominant use of red triplanes was historically inaccurate, but wanted to give clear visual signals to the audience to enable them to easily distinguish friend from foe in the aerial sequences.


title: Flyboys (film)

text: The film's only military adviser for the entire project was Jack Livesey, a convicted defrauder, who fabricated his résumé and military service to gain employment as an administrative assistant at the Imperial War Museum, London. Livesey was charged and convicted with fraudulently claiming £30,000.00 in benefits. Livesey had served three years in the British Army Catering Corps. His claims of service in Northern Ireland, the Falklands conflict and that he was a curator of The Imperial War Museum were not true.


title: Flyboys (film)

text: In the film, the RMS "Aquitania" is depicted as a luxury liner; however, in early 1914, she was converted to use as an armed merchant cruiser, and by 1915 had been put into use as a troop transport ship, painted with dazzle style camouflage; however, the film might have used it to demonstrate the style of transport ships during the war.


title: Flyboys (film)

text: "Flyboys" received mixed to negative reviews, based on the hackneyed dialogue and inconsistency of the plot. Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 33% based on 127 reviews, with an average rating of 4.91/10. The site's critics' consensus reads: "A poorly scripted history-rewriting exercise with mediocre acting and unconvincing CGI battle scenes." On Metacritic, the film has an aggregated score of 47 out of 100 based on 22 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Flyboys (film)

text: The film opened at #4 at the domestic box office, grossing $6,004,219 from 2,033 theaters, an average of $2,953 per auditorium. The bottom then fell out, the film dropping a whopping 61% in its second weekend. "Flyboys" ended up with a total domestic gross of $13,090,620, $4,744,235 internationally, and a total worldwide gross of $17,834,865. "Variety" named it one of the 10 biggest box office flops of the year.


title: Ethical egoism

text: In ethical philosophy, ethical egoism is the normative position that moral agents "ought" to act in their own self-interest. It differs from psychological egoism, which claims that people "can only" act in their self-interest. Ethical egoism also differs from rational egoism, which holds that it is "rational" to act in one's self-interest.


title: Ethical egoism

text: Ethical egoism contrasts with ethical altruism, which holds that moral agents have an obligation to help others. Egoism and altruism both contrast with ethical utilitarianism, which holds that a moral agent should treat one's self (also known as the subject) with no higher regard than one has for others (as egoism does, by elevating self-interests and "the self" to a status not granted to others). But it also holds that one is not obligated to sacrifice one's own interests (as altruism does) to help others' interests, so long as one's own interests (i.e., one's own desires or well-being) are substantially equivalent to the others' interests and well-being, but they have the choice to do so. Egoism, utilitarianism, and altruism are all forms of consequentialism, but egoism and altruism contrast with utilitarianism, in that egoism and altruism are both agent-focused forms of consequentialism (i.e., subject-focused or subjective). However, utilitarianism is held to be agent-neutral (i.e., objective and impartial): it does not treat the subject's (i.e., the self's, i.e., the moral "agent's") own interests as being more or less important than the interests, desires, or well-being of others.


title: Ethical egoism

text: Ethical egoism does not, however, require moral agents to harm the interests and well-being of others when making moral deliberation; e.g., what is in an agent's self-interest may be incidentally detrimental, beneficial, or neutral in its effect on others. Individualism allows for others' interest and well-being to be disregarded or not, as long as what is chosen is efficacious in satisfying the self-interest of the agent. Nor does ethical egoism necessarily entail that, in pursuing self-interest, one ought always to do what one wants to do; e.g., in the long term, the fulfillment of short-term desires may prove detrimental to the self. Fleeting pleasure, then, takes a back seat to protracted eudaimonia. In the words of James Rachels, "Ethical egoism ... endorses selfishness, but it doesn't endorse foolishness."


title: Ethical egoism

text: Ethical egoism is often used as the philosophical basis for support of right-libertarianism and individualist anarchism. These are political positions based partly on a belief that individuals should not coercively prevent others from exercising freedom of action.


title: Ethical egoism

text: Ethical egoism can be broadly divided into three categories: individual, personal, and universal. An "individual ethical egoist" would hold that all people should do whatever benefits "my" ("the individual's")" "self-interest; a "personal ethical egoist" would hold that they should act in "their" self-interest, but would make no claims about what anyone else ought to do; a "universal ethical egoist" would argue that everyone should act in ways that are in their self-interest.


title: Ethical egoism

text: Ethical egoism was introduced by the philosopher Henry Sidgwick in his book "The Methods of Ethics", written in 1874. Sidgwick compared egoism to the philosophy of utilitarianism, writing that whereas utilitarianism sought to maximize overall pleasure, egoism focused only on maximizing individual pleasure.


title: Ethical egoism

text: Philosophers before Sidgwick have also retroactively been identified as ethical egoists. One ancient example is the philosophy of Yang Zhu (4th century BC), Yangism, who views "wei wo", or "everything for myself", as the only virtue necessary for self-cultivation. Ancient Greek philosophers like Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics were exponents of virtue ethics, and "did not accept the formal principle that whatever the good is, we should seek only our own good, or prefer it to the good of others." However, the beliefs of the Cyrenaics have been referred to as a "form of egoistic hedonism", and while some refer to Epicurus' hedonism as a form of virtue ethics, others argue his ethics are more properly described as ethical egoism.


title: Ethical egoism

text: Philosopher James Rachels, in an essay that takes as its title the theory's name, outlines the three arguments most commonly touted in its favor:


title: Ethical egoism

text: It has been argued that extreme ethical egoism is self-defeating. Faced with a situation of limited resources, egoists would consume as much of the resource as they could, making the overall situation worse for everybody. Egoists may respond that if the situation becomes worse for everybody, that would include the egoist, so it is not, in fact, in their rational self-interest to take things to such extremes. However, the (unregulated) tragedy of the commons and the (one off) prisoner's dilemma are cases in which, on the one hand, it is rational for an individual to seek to take as much as possible "even though" that makes things worse for everybody, and on the other hand, those cases are not self-refuting since that behaviour remains rational "even though" it is ultimately self-defeating, i.e. self-defeating does not imply self-refuting. Egoists might respond that a tragedy of the commons, however, assumes some degree of public land. That is, a commons forbidding homesteading requires regulation. Thus, an argument against the tragedy of the commons, in this belief system, is fundamentally an argument for private property rights and the system that recognizes both property rights and rational self-interest—capitalism. More generally, egoists might say that an increasing respect for individual rights uniquely allows for increasing wealth creation and increasing usable resources despite a fixed amount of raw materials (e.g. the West pre-1776 versus post-1776, East versus West Germany, Hong Kong versus mainland China, North versus South Korea, etc.).


title: Ethical egoism

text: It is not clear how to apply a private ownership model to many examples of "commons", however. Examples include large fisheries, the atmosphere and the ocean.


title: Ethical egoism

text: One is that an ethical egoist would not want ethical egoism to be universalized: as it would be in the egoist's best self-interest if others acted altruistically towards them, they wouldn't want them to act egoistically; however, that is what they consider to be morally binding. Their moral principles would demand of others not to follow them, which can be considered self-defeating and leads to the question: "How can ethical egoism be considered morally binding if its advocates do not want it to be universally applied?"


title: Ethical egoism

text: Another objection (e.g. by James Rachels) states that the distinction ethical egoism makes between "yourself" and "the rest" – demanding to view the interests of "yourself" as more important – is arbitrary, as no justification for it can be offered; considering that the merits and desires of "the rest" are comparable to those of "yourself" while lacking a justifiable distinction, Rachels concludes that "the rest" should be given the same moral consideration as "yourself".


title: Ethical egoism

text: The term "ethical egoism" has been applied retroactively to philosophers such as Bernard de Mandeville and to many other materialists of his generation, although none of them declared themselves to be egoists. Note that materialism does not necessarily imply egoism, as indicated by Karl Marx, and the many other materialists who espoused forms of collectivism. It has been argued that ethical egoism can lend itself to individualist anarchism such as that of Benjamin Tucker, or the combined anarcho-communism and egoism of Emma Goldman, both of whom were proponents of many egoist ideas put forward by Max Stirner. In this context, egoism is another way of describing the sense that the common good should be enjoyed by all. However, most notable anarchists in history have been less radical, retaining altruism and a sense of the importance of the individual that is appreciable but does not go as far as egoism. Recent trends to greater appreciation of egoism within anarchism tend to come from less classical directions such as post-left anarchy or Situationism (e.g. Raoul Vaneigem). Egoism has also been referenced by anarcho-capitalists, such as Murray Rothbard.


title: Ethical egoism

text: Philosopher Max Stirner, in his book "The Ego and Its Own", was the first philosopher to call himself an egoist, though his writing makes clear that he desired not a new idea of morality (ethical egoism), but rather a rejection of morality (amoralism), as a nonexistent and limiting "spook"; for this, Stirner has been described as the first individualist anarchist. Other philosophers, such as Thomas Hobbes and David Gauthier, have argued that the conflicts which arise when people each pursue their own ends can be resolved for the best of each individual only if they all voluntarily forgo some of their aims—that is, one's self-interest is often best pursued by allowing others to pursue their self-interest as well so that liberty is equal among individuals. Sacrificing one's short-term self-interest to maximize one's long-term self-interest is one form of "rational self-interest" which is the idea behind most philosophers' advocacy of ethical egoism. Egoists have also argued that one's actual interests are not immediately obvious, and that the pursuit of self-interest involves more than merely the acquisition of some good, but the "maximizing" of one's chances of survival and/or happiness.


title: Ethical egoism

text: Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche suggested that egoistic or "life-affirming" behavior stimulates jealousy or "ressentiment" in others, and that this is the psychological motive for the altruism in Christianity. Sociologist Helmut Schoeck similarly considered envy the motive of collective efforts by society to reduce the disproportionate gains of successful individuals through moral or legal constraints, with altruism being primary among these. In addition, Nietzsche (in "Beyond Good and Evil") and Alasdair MacIntyre (in "After Virtue") have pointed out that the ancient Greeks did not associate morality with altruism in the way that post-Christian Western civilization has done.


title: Ethical egoism

text: Aristotle's view is that we have duties to ourselves as well as to other people (e.g. friends) and to the "polis" as a whole. The same is true for Thomas Aquinas, Christian Wolff and Immanuel Kant, who claim that there are duties to ourselves as Aristotle did, although it has been argued that, for Aristotle, the duty to one's self is primary.


title: Ethical egoism

text: Ayn Rand argued that there is a positive harmony of interests among free, rational humans, such that no moral agent can rationally coerce another person consistently with their own long-term self-interest. Rand argued that other people are an enormous value to an individual's well-being (through education, trade and affection), but also that this value could be fully realized only under conditions of political and economic freedom. According to Rand, voluntary trade alone can assure that human interaction is "mutually" beneficial. Rand's student, Leonard Peikoff has argued that the identification of one's interests itself is impossible absent the use of principles, and that self-interest cannot be consistently pursued absent a consistent adherence to certain ethical principles. Recently, Rand's position has also been defended by such writers as Tara Smith, Tibor Machan, Allan Gotthelf, David Kelley, Douglas Rasmussen, Nathaniel Branden, Harry Binswanger, Andrew Bernstein, and Craig Biddle.


title: Ethical egoism

text: Philosopher David L. Norton identified himself as an "ethical individualist", and, like Rand, saw a harmony between an individual's fidelity to their own self-actualization, or "personal destiny", and the achievement of society's well-being.


title: Washington Mutual

text: Washington Mutual (often abbreviated to WaMu) was the United States' largest savings and loan association until its collapse in 2008.


title: Washington Mutual

text: On Thursday, September 25, 2008, the United States Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) seized Washington Mutual’s banking operations and placed it into receivership with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The OTS took the action due to the withdrawal of $16.7 billion in deposits during a 9-day bank run (amounting to 9% of the deposits it had held on June 30, 2008). The FDIC sold the banking subsidiaries (minus unsecured debt and equity claims) to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion, which had been considering acquiring WaMu as part of a plan internally nicknamed “Project West.” All WaMu branches were rebranded as Chase branches by the end of 2009. The holding company, WaMu, Inc., was left with $33 billion in assets, and $8 billion in debt, after being stripped of its banking subsidiary by the FDIC. The next day, WaMu, Inc. filed for Chapter 11 voluntary bankruptcy in Delaware, where it was incorporated.


title: Washington Mutual

text: Regarding total assets under management, WaMu's closure and receivership is the largest bank failure in American financial history.


title: Washington Mutual

text: On March 20, 2009, WaMu filed suit against the FDIC in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking damages of approximately $13 billion for an alleged unjustified seizure and unfair low sale price to JPMorgan Chase. JPMorgan Chase promptly filed a counterclaim in the Federal Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, where the WaMu bankruptcy proceedings had been continuing since the Office of Thrift Supervision's seizure of the holding company's bank subsidiaries.


title: Washington Mutual

text: Despite its name, WaMu ceased being a mutual company in 1983 when it demutualized and became a public company on March 11. On June 30, 2008, WaMu had total assets of US$307 billion, with 2,239 retail branch offices operating in 15 states, with 4,932 ATMs, and 43,198 employees. It held liabilities in the form of deposits of $188.3 billion, and owed $82.9 billion to the Federal Home Loan Bank, and had subordinated debt of $7.8 billion. It held as assets of $118.9 billion in single-family loans, of which $52.9 billion were “option adjustable rate mortgages” (Option ARMs), with $16 billion in subprime mortgage loans, and $53.4 billion of Home Equity lines of Credit (HELOCs) and credit cards receivables of $10.6 billion. It was servicing for itself and other banks loans totaling $689.7 billion, of which $442.7 were for other banks. It had non-performing assets of $11.6 billion, including $3.23 billion in payment option ARMs and $3.0 billion in subprime mortgage loans.


title: Washington Mutual

text: On September 15, 2008, the holding company received a credit rating agency downgrade. From that date through September 24, 2008, WaMu experienced a bank run whereby customers withdrew $16.7 billion in deposits over those nine days, and in excess of $22 billion in cash outflow since July 2008, both conditions which ultimately led the Office of Thrift Supervision to close the bank.


title: Washington Mutual

text: The FDIC then sold most of the bank's assets to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion in cash plus assumption of all secured debt and some unsecured debt. Claims of the subsidiary bank's equity holders, senior and subordinated debt (all primarily owned by the holding company) were not assumed by JPMorgan Chase.


title: Washington Mutual

text: WaMu was incorporated as the Washington National Building Loan and Investment Association on September 25, 1889, after the Great Seattle Fire destroyed 120 acres (49 ha) of the central business district of Seattle. The newly formed company made its first home mortgage loan on the West Coast on February 10, 1890. It changed its name to Washington Savings and Loan Association on June 25, 1908. By September 12, 1917, it was operating under the name WaMu Savings Bank. The company purchased its first company, the financially distressed Continental Mutual Savings Bank, on July 25, 1930. Its marketing slogan for much of its history was “The Friend of the Family”.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In April 1982, WaMu purchased the brokerage firm Murphey Favre for undisclosed amount in cash and demutualized the following year, converting into a capital stock savings bank. Stock in the capital stock savings bank was first offered for sale on March 11, 1983. By 1989, its assets had doubled.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In November 1994, WaMu formed a new holding called Washington Mutual, Inc. and separated its non-banking units from its primary banking unit, Washington Mutual Savings Bank, which was simultaneously renamed Washington Mutual Bank. The company's stock continued to trade on Nasdaq under WAMU.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In October 2005, WaMu purchased the formerly "subprime" credit card issuer Providian for approximately $6.5 billion, although Providian's new management team's strategy of targeting Prime credit card consumers had been underway since 2001, therefore the credit card unit's nonperforming loan portfolio had improved significantly prior to the company's sale to WaMu. In March 2006, WaMu began the move into its new headquarters, WaMu Center, located in downtown Seattle. The company's previous headquarters, WaMu Tower, stands about a block away from the new building on Second Avenue. In August 2006, WaMu began using the official abbreviation of WaMu in all but legal situations.


title: Washington Mutual

text: After the acquisition of Murphey Favre, WaMu made numerous acquisitions with the aim of expanding the corporation. By acquiring companies including PNC Mortgage, Fleet Mortgage and Homeside Lending, WaMu became the third-largest mortgage lender in the U.S. With the acquisition of Providian Financial Corporation in October 2005, WaMu became the nation's 9th-largest credit-card company.


title: Washington Mutual

text: Many of WaMu's acquisitions became reviled as the rapid post-merger integrations resulted in numerous errors. The purchase of the original PNC Mortgage came at a time when subprime lending was in a “boom” period, with PNC Financial Services believing that the market was too volatile. (PNC later re-entered the mortgage market in 2009 through its acquisition of National City Corp., with no plans to re-enter subprime lending.) The Dime merger resulted in account ownership to be split with account beneficiaries. The Fleet Mortgage merger resulted in entire loans simply disappearing—being serviced, but unable to be found by customer service representatives.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In April 1983, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of three branch offices from the Tacoma-based United Mutual Savings Bank for $3.25 million. In April 1984, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Spokane-based Lincoln Mutual Savings Bank with 14 of its 16 branch offices for $4.5 million. At the time of the announcement, WaMu had 39 branch offices, mostly in western Washington.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In May 1987, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Wenatchee-based Columbia Federal Savings Bank for $40 million and also the Seattle-based Shoreline Savings Bank for $7.5 million. At the time of the announcement in May 1987, WaMu had 50 branch offices, all within Washington state. Both acquisitions were completed in April 1988.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In January 1990, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of all seven offices of the Seattle-based Old Stone Bank of Washington from the Rhode Island-based Old Stone Corporation for an undisclosed amount. Old Stone originally entered the state of Washington through the acquisition of the ailing Seattle-based Citizens Federal Savings and Loan Association in 1985 with the assistance of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation. The acquisition by WaMu was completed in June 1990 for $10 million.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In June 1990, WaMu announced the completed acquisition of all six offices of the failed Walla Walla-based Frontier Federal Savings and Loan Association in Eastern Washington from the Resolution Trust Corporation for $1.8 million.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In September 1990, WaMu announced the completed acquisition of all three Washington branches of the failed Utah-based Williamsburg Federal Savings and Loan Association from the Resolution Trust Corporation for $1.3 million.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In November 1990, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Vancouver-based VanFed Bancorp with its Vancouver Federal Savings Bank subsidiary for $23.3 million. At the time of the announcement in November 1990, WaMu had 75 branch offices, all within Washington state. The acquisition was completed in August 1991.


title: Washington Mutual

text: The acquisition of the Pacific Northwest branch offices from the New York-based CrossLand Savings Bank that was announced in April 1991 and completed in November 1991 gave WaMu four offices within the state of Washington in addition to other offices located in the state of Oregon.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In August 1991, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Seattle-based Sound Savings and Loan Association for an undisclosed amount. At the time of the announcement in August 1991, WaMu had 84 branch offices, all within Washington state. The acquisition was completed in January 1992.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In September 1991, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Bremerton-based GNW Financial Corporation with its Great Northwest Bank subsidiary for $64 million in cash and stock. The acquisition was completed in April 1992.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In December 1991, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of both Washington state branch offices of the California-based World Savings and Loan Association of America, a subsidiary of Golden West Financial, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition was completed in March 1992.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In August 1992, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Lynnwood-based Pioneer Savings Bank for $181 million in stock. The acquisition was completed in March 1993.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In October 1992, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the ailing Seattle-based Pacific First Financial Corporation with its Pacific First Bank subsidiary for $663 million from its Canada-based parent Royal Trustco. The acquisition was contingent on having Pacific First dispose of its branch offices in California and having its Canadian parent Royal Trustco assume all of Pacific First's bad loans. The acquisition was completed in April 1993. At the time of the initial announcement in October 1992, WaMu had 118 branch offices in Washington and Oregon while Pacific First had 127 branch offices in Washington, Oregon and California. Pacific First had previously announced that it was trading its California offices for Great Western's Washington offices. As a result of the Pacific First acquisition, WaMu became one of the largest banking institution based upon consumer deposits in the state of Washington, second only to Seafirst.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In June 1994, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Bellevue-based Summit Bancorp with its Summit Savings Bank subsidiary for $25 million in stock. At the time of the announcement, WaMu had 231 branch offices in Washington and Oregon. The acquisition was completed in November 1994.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In June 1995, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Bellevue-based Enterprise Bank for $26.8 million in stock, this was WaMu's entry into the commercial banking sector. Enterprise Bank was a highly profitable one unit carriage trade business bank staffed with highly successful management. WaMu named Tom Cleveland President of the commercial banking unit which later included Western Bank in Coos Bay Oregon. At the time of the announcement, WaMu had 260 branch offices. Unlike the previous acquisition targets, Enterprise held a commercial bank charter and not a thrift charter.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In April 1991, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the 25 offices in the Portland, Oregon / Vancouver, Washington area from the ailing New York-based CrossLand Savings Bank, a subsidiary of Brooklyn Bancorp, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition was completed in November 1991. Seven of the 25 offices were located in Washington with the remainder in Oregon. As part of the transaction, CrossLand Savings closed seven offices in Oregon and three offices in Washington, leaving eleven offices in Oregon and four in Washington. CrossLand had previously entered Oregon (and three other states) through the relatively recent acquisition of the troubled Utah-based Western Savings and Loan Association. The CrossLand acquisition gave WaMu a toe hold entry into Oregon via Portland.


title: Washington Mutual

text: As a result of the Pacific First acquisition in April 1993, WaMu became the fourth largest banking institution based upon consumer deposits within the state of Oregon. Originally, Pacific First grew quickly in Oregon during the late 1980s through the acquisition of troubled savings and loans. By February 1991, Pacific First had 78 branches in Oregon, more than any other thrift. Pacific First had 71 branches in Oregon by July 1992.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In April 1994, WaMu announced the completed acquisition of three Portland-area offices of the failed Portland-based Far West Federal Savings Bank from the Resolution Trust Corporation for $2.2 million.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In October 1995, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Coos Bay-based Western Bank for $156 million in stock. The acquisition was completed in February 1996. Since Western Bank possessed a commercial bank charter and not a more restrictive savings & loan charter, WaMu decided to allow Western Bank to keep its charter and name and to remain semi-autonomous for a while. At the time of the acquisition, Western Bank had 41 offices throughout Oregon. Five years later, WaMu decided to abandon the Western Bank brand and integrate most of the former Western Bank offices into the existing WaMu network in Oregon in 2001. Due to branch overlaps between the two brands, 12 Western Bank branch offices and one WaMu branch office were sold to the Klamath Falls-based Klamath First Bancorp for $33 million.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In March 1994, WaMu announced that they were planning to expand into the state of Idaho by building new branch offices inside Fred Meyer supermarket stores with the first three being opened in the Boise-area in July and August.


title: Washington Mutual

text: A branch office in Idaho Falls was acquired from the Utah-based United Savings Bank when WaMu purchased the savings bank in January 1997.


title: Washington Mutual

text: By March 2000, there were 9 locations within Idaho and later 22 locations in 2008 when Chase acquired WaMu.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In July 1994, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Salt Lake City-based Olympus Capital Corporation with its Olympus Bank, FSB, subsidiary for $52.1 million in stock. At the time of the announcement, WaMu had 250 branch offices in Washington and Oregon while Olympus had eight branch offices in Utah and two in Montana. The acquisition was completed in May 1995.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In March 1996, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Ogden-based Utah Federal Savings Bank for an undisclosed amount. At the time of the announcement, Utah Federal had five branch offices while WaMu had 16 within Utah. The acquisition was completed in December 1996 for $15.2 million.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In September 1996, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Salt Lake City-based United Western Financial Group Inc. with its United Savings Bank subsidiary for $80.3 million in cash. At the time of the announcement, United Savings Bank had eight branch offices in Utah and one in Idaho. The acquisition was completed in January 1997.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In May 1995, WaMu acquired two branch offices in Butte as the result of the acquisition of the Utah-based Olympus Capital Corporation with its Olympus Bank FSB subsidiary. Four years later, WaMu later sold the two offices to Glacier Bancorp in 1999 for an undisclosed amount and quietly left the state of Montana.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In July 1996, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Fort Worth, Texas-based Keystone Holdings Inc. with its Irvine-based American Savings Bank subsidiary for $1.6 billion in stock. At the time of the announcement, WaMu had 317 branch offices in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah and Montana while American Savings Bank had 220 branch offices in California. The acquisition was completed in December 1996. American kept its name after the acquisition. The result of the acquisition nearly doubled the total deposits of all WaMu subsidiaries from $22 billion to $42 billion.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In February 1997, the Chatsworth-based Great Western Financial, the holding company for second largest thrift in the nation Great Western Bank, found itself the target of a hostile takeover attempt of arch-rival H. F. Ahmanson & Co., the holding company for the largest thrift in the nation Home Savings of America, that would have involved $5.8 billion worth of stock. Since the two companies had large overlapping territories, many Great Western offices would have been closed by the victor if the takeover attempt had succeeded. The only way the combat a hostile takeover was to find another company, a so-called white knight, that would allow a merger on much better terms. One such company was WaMu. In March, Great Western Financial announced that it had accepted WaMu's merger proposal for $6.6 billion in WaMu stock. Ahmanson quickly increased their bids but the bids were also rejected. Great Western approved the merger with WaMu in June and the merger was completed in July. As part of its merger agreement, it was originally announced that Great Western offices would be allowed to keep the Great Western name and there were later discussion of converting the American Savings offices to the Great Western brand. In the end, it was felt that it was best for the company to have only one brand throughout the nation instead of multiple regional brands so it was announce in December 1997 that both Great Western and American names would be retired in favor of the WaMu name. The previous month, it was announced in November that 85 redundant branch offices were identified in California and were to be closed within the following year. Before the merger was complete, WaMu had a total of 413 branch operating under various names across the country while Great Western had 416 branch offices operating in California and Florida.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In March 1998, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Irwindale-based H. F. Ahmanson & Company with its Home Savings of America subsidiary for approximately $10 billion in stock. The acquisition was completed in October 1998 for only $6.9 billion in stock. Before the merger was complete, WaMu had a total of 892 branch operating under various names (WaMu, American Savings, Great Western, etc.) across the country while Home Savings had 409 branch offices operating in California and Texas. A few days after the completion of the merger, WaMu announced plans to close 161 branch offices in California.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In August 2000, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Houston-based Bank United Corporation with its 155 branch offices, all located in Texas, for $1.49 billion in stock. The acquisition was completed in February 2001.


title: Washington Mutual

text: As a result of branch overlap between Bank United and WaMu, 17 branch offices were closed in Texas, 10 of which were in Houston.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In June 2001, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the New York City-based Dime Bancorp with its Dime Savings Bank subsidiary for $5.2 billion in cash and stock. The acquisition was completed in January 2002. Dime had 123 branch offices in the New York City area of both New York and New Jersey.


title: Washington Mutual

text: With a thrift charter, there were a few things that WaMu was not able to do until it was able to obtain a commercial bank charter, such as making commercial loans above a certain size. To get around this problem, WaMu began to purchase commercial banks and maintain them as separate business entities. In August 1995, WaMu acquired the one office Bellevue-based Enterprise Bank in Washington. A few months later, WaMu acquired the 41 office Coos Bay-based Western Bank in Oregon. By 1997, the Enterprise name and Western Bank name were merged and operated under Western Bank moniker.


title: Washington Mutual

text: After WaMu expanded into California through the acquisitions of American Savings, Great Western, and Home Savings, WaMu quietly acquired the one-office Industrial Bank in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles an undisclosed amount in 1999 and renamed it WM Business Bank.


title: Washington Mutual

text: By 2001, WaMu had 38 specialized business banking centers operating under the Western Bank name in the Northwest and the WM Business Bank name in California when they decided to exit their ill-fated venture into the commercial banking market that was then dominated with the likes of Wells Fargo and Bank of America.


title: Washington Mutual

text: During the late 1990s and early 2000s, WaMu decided to aggressively expand in the subprime mortgage lending field through the acquisition of existing mortgage companies at a time when other financial institutions were leaving.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In May 1999, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Orange, California-based Long Beach Financial Corporation with its Long Beach Mortgage Company subsidiary for $350.4 million in cash and stock. The acquisition was completed in October 1999. Long Beach had specialized in providing subprime mortgages. Some of Long Beach's questionable business practices may have led to WaMu's failure in 2008.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In January 2000, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Los Angeles-based Alta Residential Mortgage Trust for $23 million.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In October 2000, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Vernon Hills, Illinois-based PNC Mortgage Corporation and PNC Mortgage Securities Corporation from the PNC Financial Services Group for $605 million in cash. The acquisition was completed in February 2001. The result of the PNC Mortgage acquisition made WaMu the nation's third-largest lender.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In April 2001, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Columbia, South Carolina-based Fleet Mortgage Corporation from FleetBoston Financial for $660 million in cash. The acquisition was completed in June 2001. The result of the Fleet Mortgage acquisition made WaMu the nation's second-largest mortgage-servicing business.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In December 2001, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Jacksonville, Florida-based HomeSide Lending, Inc. from the National Australia Bank for $1.9 billion. The agreement did not include the mortgage servicing rights and related financial hedges for the business. The acquisition was completed in March 2002. In August 2002, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the rest of HomeSide that included the mortgage servicing rights on a mortgage portfolio worth about $131 billion for $1.3 billion in cash and the assumption of $735 million in debt. The acquisition was completed in October 2002.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In July 2002, the San Mateo, California-based Bay View Capital Corporation announced the pending sale of the mortgage loan portfolio for its Bay View Bank subsidiary to WaMu for a "slight premium to book value". The sale was completed in the following month.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In April 2006, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of the Irvine, California-based Commercial Capital Bancorp, Inc. with its Commercial Capital Bank FSB subsidiary for $983 million in cash. The acquisition was completed in October 2006. Commercial Capital had specialized in loans for the multifamily and small commercial real estate lending markets and was the third largest multifamily lender in California.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In June 2005, WaMu announced the pending acquisition of Providian Financial Corporation, tenth-largest credit-card issuer in the country, for $6.45 billion in stock and cash. The acquisition was completed in June 2005.


title: Washington Mutual

text: Prior to this acquisition, WaMu had their credit cards initially issued by Associates National Bank and later Citibank South Dakota, N.A. and was one of the largest banking organization that did not issue its own credit cards. In 2005, chairman and chief executive officer Kerry Killinger said that lack of company-issued credit cards was a "major hole in our product line." Credit cards were not mentioned on their website nor in their published annual reports as an available service offered by their company prior to 2001.


title: Washington Mutual

text: Chairman and CEO Kerry Killinger had pledged in 2003: "We hope to do to this industry what Wal-Mart did to theirs, Starbucks did to theirs, Costco did to theirs and Lowe's, Home Depot did to their industry. And I think if we've done our job, five years from now you're not going to call us a bank."


title: Washington Mutual

text: Killinger's goal was to build WaMu into the "Wal-Mart of Banking", which would cater to lower- and middle-class consumers that other banks deemed too risky. Complex mortgages and credit cards had terms that 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. WaMu pressed sales agents to approve loans while placing less emphasis on borrowers' incomes and assets. WaMu set up a system that enabled real estate agents to collect fees of more than $10,000 for bringing in borrowers. Variable-rate loans – Option Adjustable Rate Mortgages (Option ARMs) in particular – were especially attractive, because they carried higher fees than other loans and allowed WaMu to book profits on interest payments that borrowers deferred. As WaMu was selling many of its loans to investors, it worried less about defaults.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In December 2007, the subsidiary WaMu Bank reorganized its home-loan division, closing 160 of its 336 home-loan offices and removing 2,600 positions in its home-loan staff (a 22% reduction).


title: Washington Mutual

text: In March 2008, on the same weekend that JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon negotiated the takeover of Bear Stearns, he secretly dispatched members of his team to Seattle to meet with WaMu executives, urging them to consider a quick deal. However, WaMu Chairman and CEO Kerry Killinger rejected JPMorgan Chase's offer that valued WaMu at $8 a share, mostly in stock.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In April 2008, the holding company, responding to losses and difficulties sustained as a result of the 2007–2008 subprime mortgage crisis, announced that 3,000 people companywide would lose their jobs, and the company stated its intent to close its approximately 176 remaining stand-alone, home-loan offices, including 23 in Washington and a loan-processing center in Bellevue, Washington. It stopped buying loans from outside mortgage brokers — known in the trade as "wholesale lending." WaMu also announced a $7 billion infusion of new capital by new outside investors led by TPG Capital. TPG agreed to pump $2 billion into the WaMu holding company; other investors, including some of WaMu's current institutional holders, agreed to buy an additional $5 billion in newly issued stock. This angered many investors, as TPG's investment would dilute the holdings of existing shareholders, and as WaMu executives excluded mortgage losses from computing bonuses.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In June 2008, Kerry Killinger stepped down as the chairman, though remaining the Chief Executive Officer. On September 8, 2008, under pressure from investors, the WaMu holding company's board of directors dismissed Killinger as the CEO. Alan H. Fishman, chairman of mortgage broker Meridian Capital Group, and a former chief operating officer of Sovereign Bank, was named the new CEO for 17 days.


title: Washington Mutual

text: By mid-September 2008, WaMu's share price had closed as low as $2.00. It had been worth over $30.00 in September 2007, and had briefly traded as high as $45 in the previous year. While WaMu publicly insisted it could stay independent, earlier in the month it had quietly hired Goldman Sachs to identify potential bidders. However, several deadlines passed without anyone submitting a bid. At the same time, WaMu suffered a massive run (mostly via electronic banking over the internet and wire transfer ); customers pulled out $16.7 billion in deposits in a ten-day span.


title: Washington Mutual

text: This led the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department to step up pressure for WaMu to find a buyer, as a takeover by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) could have been a severe drain on the FDIC insurance fund, which had already been hard hit by the failure of IndyMac that year. The FDIC ultimately held a secret auction of WaMu Bank, which was won by JPMorgan Chase. On the morning of Thursday, September 25 (which happened to be the 119th anniversary of WaMu's establishment), regulators informed officials at JPMorgan Chase that they were the winners.


title: Washington Mutual

text: On Thursday night (shortly after the close of business on the West Coast), the Office of Thrift Supervision seized WaMu Bank and placed it into the receivership of the FDIC. In a statement, the OTS said that the massive run meant that WaMu was no longer sound. The FDIC then sold most of WaMu Bank's assets, including the branch network, to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion. JPMorgan Chase agreed to assume the bank's secured debts and liabilities to depositors. The transaction did not require any FDIC insurance funds. Normally, bank seizures take place after the close of business on Fridays. However, due to the bank's deteriorating condition and leaks that a seizure was imminent, regulators felt compelled to act a day early.


title: Washington Mutual

text: Because JPMorgan Chase bought WaMu's assets for a low price, WaMu's stockholders were nearly wiped out. Its stock price dropped to $0.16 a share, well below its high of a year earlier. In its Chapter 11 filing, WaMu listed assets of $33 billion and debt of $8 billion. (ref. Appendix A). The filing also indicates that enough funds are available for distribution to unsecured creditors.


title: Washington Mutual

text: Within days of the seizure, a hedge fund adviser and investment strategist, Mike Stathis of AVA Investment Analytics, issued a formal complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission, demonstrating evidence of insider trading. The complaint also alleged that WaMu was not insolvent, and several Wall Street firms and hedge funds had conspired to short the stock. He also stated that he spoke with a reporter from the Associated Press who told him that he was contacted by a WaMu executive hours before the seizure, telling the reporter that it would happen for "political reasons." In later criticisms, Stathis discussed that neither the FDIC nor OTS ever disclosed any evidence of WaMu's insolvency. Stathis stated that within a few weeks of submitting his complaint, he was visited by federal agents who held him in an interrogation room for questioning. As a result of this, Stathis stated that he felt bullied and did not release the SEC complaint into the public domain until a year later.


title: Washington Mutual

text: Shareholders fought what they considered the illegal seizure of WaMu through such websites as WaMuCoup.com and others, claiming that the OTS acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner and seized the bank for political reasons or for the benefit of JPMorgan Chase, which acquired a large network of branches at what they claim to be an unfairly low price. Shareholders claimed that as of the date of the takeover, the bank had enough liquidity to meet all its obligations and was in compliance with the business plan negotiated with the OTS 2 weeks earlier and that the holding company's board and management was kept completely in the dark about the government's negotiations with Chase, hampering the bank's ability to sell itself on its own. Chief executive Alan H. Fishman was flying from New York to Seattle on the day the bank was closed, and eventually received a $7.5 million sign-on bonus and cash severance of $11.6 million (which he declined) after being CEO for 17 days. Senator Maria Cantwell demanded an explanation from the government and threatened to open an investigation and WaMu's former shareholders have threatened a lawsuit demanding compensation for the lost value of their shares.


title: Washington Mutual

text: The seizure of WaMu Bank resulted in the largest bank failure in American financial history, dwarfing the failure of Continental Illinois in 1984.


title: Washington Mutual

text: On September 26, 2008, WaMu, Inc., and its remaining subsidiary, WMI Investment Corp., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. WaMu, Inc., was promptly delisted from trading on the New York Stock Exchange, and commenced trading via Pink Sheets. The bankruptcy was the second major filing in as many weeks, after the Lehman Brothers filing eleven days earlier; both bankruptcies far outpaced WorldCom's 2002 filing, which had held the record with just under $104 billion in assets (WaMu's alone, which was approximately half that of Lehman Brothers, was three times as much as WorldCom's).


title: Washington Mutual

text: All assets but only some liabilities (including deposits, covered bonds, and other secured debt) of WaMu Bank were assumed by JPMorgan Chase. Under the deal, JPMorgan Chase acquired all the banking operations of WaMu, including $307 billion in assets and $188 billion in deposits, for a price of $1.9 billion plus debt assumptions. Unsecured senior debt obligations of the bank were not assumed by JPMorgan Chase, leaving holders of those obligations with little meaningful source of recovery. On the morning of September 26, WaMu Bank customers were informed that all deposits held by WaMu were now liabilities of JPMorgan Chase.


title: Washington Mutual

text: The IRS claimed $12.5 billion in back taxes from WaMu, Inc. The company filed court papers on January 22, 2009 alleging losses were $20 billion, and the company requested that it pay nothing of the tax debt, stating that the IRS could owe WaMu Inc. a tax refund. In a 2010 settlement between Wash. Mutual Inc. (in receivership), the FDIC, and JPMorgan Chase, a tax refund of about US$5.7 billion will be shared between Wash. Mutual Inc., JPMorgan Chase and FDIC.


title: Washington Mutual

text: WaMu, Inc., sued the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) for US$13 billion after the sale of its banking operations to JPMorgan Chase. WMI attorneys claim the bank did not get fair value for the bank, and multiple subsidiaries belonging to the parent company were taken.


title: Washington Mutual

text: On January 11, 2010, the United States Department of Justice, Office of the United States Trustee, District of Delaware, pursuant to Section 1102(a)(1) of the Bankruptcy Code, appointed a Committee of Equity Security Holders to represent all shareholders of both preferred and common stock. All of the Motions to Disband the Committee of Equity Security Holders were denied on January 28, 2010 by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Mary F. Walrath, District of Delaware.


title: Washington Mutual

text: On July 20, 2010, bankruptcy judge Mary Walrath approved a motion of the EC for an examiner to investigate potential legal claims and assets of WMI, handing a victory to shareholders. The Judge directed the examiner to investigate not just the legal settlement with the FDIC and JPMorgan Chase at the heart of WaMu's reorganization, but also all potential claims and assets that are part of the settlement or that will be retained by the company.


title: Washington Mutual

text: On July 26, 2010, U.S. Trustee Roberta A. DeAngelis appointed veteran bankruptcy examiner and McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP partner Joshua R. Hochberg to conduct a probe into the proposed settlement between WMI, JPMorgan Chase and the FDIC. Hochberg is a partner in McKenna Long & Aldridge's Washington office whose practice focuses on individual and corporate white collar defense, internal investigations and compliance.


title: Washington Mutual

text: On August 10, 2010, the bankruptcy judge rejected WaMu Inc.'s effort to obtain personal financial information from shareholders demanding that the company schedule an annual meeting. Attorneys for the EC said that WMI was simply trying to delay scheduling a shareholder meeting by seeking personal information. The judge agreed that WMI was not entitled to the information.


title: Washington Mutual

text: On November 1, 2010, examiner Joshua R. Hochberg from McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP presented his long-awaited report, but it did not meet the expectations of the court, since the report was based on unsworn interviews and confidential attorney-client work. On December 12, the court decided to exclude the examiner's report during the plan confirmation hearings, saying it can't be considered expert testimony or submitted as evidence unless it is subject to questioning to determine the basis of its conclusions.


title: Washington Mutual

text: On January 7, 2011, the bankruptcy court rejected the 6th proposed plan of reorganization, which was proposed by the debtors and their lawyers from Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. Judge Mary Walrath focused many of her criticisms on the company's releases of liability granted to directors, officers and others including some hedge funds, who she said did not contribute anything to the settlement. She noted for example that shareholders, who will likely get nothing, should not have to release the company's board from the threat of being sued by them. However, many WaMu shareholders believe there will be a significant recovery when WaMu emerges from bankruptcy.


title: Washington Mutual

text: On September 14, 2011, the court also rejected the modified 6th proposed plan of reorganization. Judge Mary F. Walrath wrote that four hedge funds that had played a role in WaMu's restructuring might have received confidential information that could have been used to trade improperly in the bank's debt. The four hedge funds are Appaloosa Management, Aurelius Capital Management, Centerbridge Partners and Owl Creek Asset Management.


title: Washington Mutual

text: A seventh plan of reorganization was announced in February 2012 and the company finally emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy the following month as WMI Holdings Corporation. By 2015, WMI Holdings was able to raise $598 million and was looking for new acquisitions.


title: Washington Mutual

text: During 2009, all of the WaMu Bank branches that had been purchased from the FDIC after the bank had been placed into receivership, were rebranded to Chase or shuttered. All financial documents issued by WaMu were changed to carry the Chase logo. Credit and debit cards issued by WaMu or Providian were changed to carry the Chase logo.


title: Washington Mutual

text: The transition to Chase began in early 2009, when Chase ATMs became accessible for WaMu customers at no extra charge. All branches and accounts were formally merged in 2009 as the WaMu brand was retired. Branches in the Pacific Northwest, Idaho, and Utah were rebranded in May 2009; branches in Florida, Georgia, Texas, Illinois, and Greater New York were rebranded in July 2009, and the remaining branches in Nevada, California, Arizona, and Colorado were rebranded in October 2009. The last rebrandings formally retired the WaMu name.


title: Washington Mutual

text: In markets where Chase already had a dominant presence, such as Greater New York and Chicago (owing to the presence of Chase and predecessor Bank One), Chase further disposed of such branches to other banks. In New York, for instance, the acquisition resulted in Chase branches located on the same block as WaMu branches.


title: Washington Mutual

text: This advertising campaign was introduced between 2005 and 2007. Numerous WaMu commercials showed traditionally-dressed 60-70-year-old overweight bankers laughing out loud at a WaMu representative (who is much younger and fitter), who says the words "Free Checking Account".


title: Washington Mutual

text: WaMu introduced an advertising campaign during the 2003 Academy Awards known as "The Power of Yes". This was to promote the offering of loans to all consumers, particularly borrowers that the banks deemed too risky. Another commercial in the ad series showed WaMu representatives in casual clothes, contrasting with traditionally-dressed bankers in suits.


title: Washington Mutual

text: "Whoo hoo!" was an advertising campaign introduced by WaMu in February 2008. As fears of an economic crisis were rising, and WaMu was looking to become an "iconic brand that people love", they began courting consumers with a new slogan, designed to position WaMu as a consumer-friendly institution.


title: Washington Mutual

text: During its run, the Whoo hoo! ads, created by TBWA\Chiat\Day of Playa del Rey, California, become widespread in web navigation. After WaMu launched the new advertisement, there was double digit growth at its website and the term "wamu" appeared in searches over 1,000% more between January and March than in all of 2007.


title: Washington Mutual

text: WaMu (before the bank's September 2008 conservatorship and sale to JPMorgan Chase) applied to register a trademark in the phrase. Initially, the bank wanted to use "woo hoo" (without the "h" in the first word) as the slogan, but they were concerned because of the existing use of the phrase by Homer Simpson, a character in "The Simpsons".


title: Washington Mutual

text: WaMu introduced a unique branch design known as Occasio which eliminated traditional teller windows and queuing stanchions in favor of an open, circular floor plan with a greeter or "concierge" position and tellers working from behind podiums. The Occasio design was introduced in 2000 and patented in 2004, but was phased out following the JPMorgan Chase acquisition of WaMu's retail banking operations.


title: This Old Man

text: "This Old Man" (or "Knick Knack Paddy Whack") is an English language children's song, counting exercise and nursery rhyme with a Roud Folk Song Index number of 3550.


title: This Old Man

text: The origins of this song are obscure. The earliest extant record is a version noted in Anne Gilchrist's "Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society" (1937), learned from her Welsh nurse in the 1870s under the title "Jack Jintle" with the lyrics:


title: This Old Man

text: Nicholas Monsarrat (1910–1979), in his autobiography "Life Is a Four Letter Word", refers to the song as being 'a Liverpool song' adding that it was 'local and original' during his childhood in Liverpool. A similar version was included in Cecil Sharp and Sabine Baring-Gould's "English Folk-Songs for Schools", published in 1906. It was collected several times in England in the early 20th century with a variety of lyrics. In 1948 it was included by Pete Seeger and Ruth Crawford in their "American Folk Songs for Children" and recorded by Seeger in 1953. It received a boost in popularity when it was adapted for the film "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness" (1958) by composer Malcolm Arnold as "The Children's Marching Song", which led to hit singles for Cyril Stapleton and Mitch Miller, both versions making the Top 40.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens (born 18 January 1938) is an English sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern sociologists and is the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29 languages, issuing on average more than one book every year. In 2007, Giddens was listed as the fifth most-referenced author of books in the humanities. He has academic appointments in approximately twenty different universities throughout the world and has received numerous honorary degrees.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Four notable stages can be identified in his academic life. The first one involved outlining a new vision of what sociology is, presenting a theoretical and methodological understanding of that field based on a critical reinterpretation of the classics. His major publications of that era include "Capitalism and Modern Social Theory" (1971) and "The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies" (1973). In the second stage, Giddens developed the theory of structuration, an analysis of agency and structure in which primacy is granted to neither. His works of that period, such as "New Rules of Sociological Method" (1976), "Central Problems in Social Theory" (1979) and "The Constitution of Society" (1984), brought him international fame on the sociological arena. The third stage of Giddens's academic work was concerned with modernity, globalisation and politics, especially the impact of modernity on social and personal life. This stage is reflected by his critique of postmodernity and discussions of a new "utopian-realist" Third Way in politics which is visible in "The Consequences of Modernity" (1990), "Modernity and Self-Identity" (1991), "The Transformation of Intimacy" (1992), "Beyond Left and Right" (1994) and "The Third Way" (1998). Giddens' ambition was both to recast social theory and to re-examine our understanding of the development and trajectory of modernity.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: In the most recent stage, Giddens has turned his attention to a more concrete range of problems relevant to the evolution of world society, namely environmental issues, focussing especially upon debates about climate change, analysed in successive editions of his book "The Politics of Climate Change" (2009); the role and nature of the European Union in "Turbulent and Mighty Continent" (2014); and in a series of lectures and speeches also the nature and consequences of the Digital Revolution.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Giddens served as Director of the London School of Economics from 1997 to 2003, where he is now Emeritus Professor at the Department of Sociology. He is a life fellow of King's College, Cambridge.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Born on 18 January 1938, Giddens was born and raised in Edmonton, London, and grew up in a lower-middle-class family, son of a clerk with London Transport. He attended Minchenden Grammar School. He was the first member of his family to go to university. Giddens received his undergraduate academic degree in joint sociology and psychology at the University of Hull in 1959, followed by a master's degree at the London School of Economics supervised by David Lockwood and Asher Tropp. He later gained a PhD at King's College, Cambridge. In 1961, Giddens started working at the University of Leicester where he taught social psychology. At Leicester, considered to be one of the seedbeds of British sociology, he met Norbert Elias and began to work on his own theoretical position. In 1969, Giddens was appointed to a position at the University of Cambridge, where he later helped create the Social and Political Sciences Committee (SPS, now HSPS).


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Giddens worked for many years at Cambridge as a fellow of King's College and was eventually promoted to a full professorship in 1987. He is cofounder of Polity Press (1985). From 1997 to 2003, he was Director of the London School of Economics and a member of the advisory council of the Institute for Public Policy Research. He was also an adviser to Tony Blair. It was Giddens' Third Way political approach that has been Blair's guiding political idea. He has been a vocal participant in British political debates, supporting the centre-left Labour Party with media appearances and articles (many of which are published in the "New Statesman").


title: Anthony Giddens

text: He was given a life peerage in June 2004 as Baron Giddens, of Southgate in the London Borough of Enfield and sits in the House of Lords for the Labour Party. He is the recipient of many academic honour


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Giddens, the author of over 34 books and 200 articles, essays and reviews, has contributed and written about most notable developments in the area of social sciences, with the exception of research design and methods. He has written commentaries on most leading schools and figures and has used most sociological paradigms in both micro and macrosociology. His writings range from abstract, metatheoretical problems to very direct and 'down-to-earth' textbooks for students. His textbook, Sociology (9th edition, Polity), has sold over 1 million copies. Finally, he is also known for his interdisciplinary approach. Giddens has commented not only on the developments in sociology, but also in anthropology, archaeology, psychology, philosophy, history, linguistics, economics, social work and most recently political science. In view of his knowledge and works, one may view much of his life's work as a form of grand synthesis of sociological theory.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Before 1976, most of Giddens' writings offered critical commentary on a wide range of writers, schools and traditions. Giddens took a stance against the then-dominant structural functionalism (represented by Talcott Parsons) as well as criticising evolutionism and historical materialism. In "Capitalism and Modern Social Theory" (1971), he examined the work of Max Weber, Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx, arguing that despite their different approaches each was concerned with the link between capitalism and social life. Giddens emphasised the social constructs of power, modernity and institutions, defining sociology as such: study of social institutions brought into being by the industrial transformation of the past two or three centuries."


title: Anthony Giddens

text: In "New Rules of Sociological Method" (1976), the title of which alludes to Durkheim's "Rules of the Sociological Method" of 1895, Giddens attempted to explain how sociology should be done and addressed a long-standing divide between those theorists who prioritise macro-level studies of social life—looking at the big picture of society—and those who emphasise the micro level—what everyday life means to individuals. In "New Rules", he noted that the functionalist approach invented by Durkheim treated society as a reality unto itself not reducible to individuals. He rejected Durkheim's sociological positivism paradigm which attempted to predict how societies operate, ignoring the meanings as understood by individuals. Giddens noted: "Society only has form, and that form only has effects on people, insofar as structure is produced and reproduced in what people do."


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Giddens contrasted Durkheim with Weber's approach—interpretative sociology—focused on understanding agency and motives of individuals. Giddens is closer to Weber than Durkheim, but in his analysis he rejects both of those approaches, stating that while society is not a collective reality, nor should the individual be treated as the central unit of analysis. Rather, he uses the logic of hermeneutic tradition from interpretative sociology to argue for the importance of agency in sociological theory, claiming that human social actors are always to some degree knowledgeable about what they are doing. Social order is therefore a result of some pre-planned social actions, not automatic evolutionary response. Unlike natural scientists, sociologists have to interpret a social world which is already interpreted by the actors that inhabit it. According to Giddens, there is a duality of structure by which social practice, the principal unit of investigation, has both a structural and an agency-component. The structural environment constrains individual behaviour, but it also makes it possible. He also noted the existence of a specific form of a social cycle. Once sociological concepts are formed, they filter back into everyday world and change the way people think. Because social actors are reflexive and monitor the ongoing flow of activities and structural conditions, they adapt their actions to their evolving understandings. As a result, social scientific knowledge of society will actually change human activities. Giddens calls this two-tiered, interpretive and dialectical relationship between social scientific knowledge and human practices the double hermeneutic. Giddens also stressed the importance of power, which is means to ends, and hence is directly involved in the actions of every person. Power, the transformative capacity of people to change the social and material world, is closely shaped by knowledge and space-time. In "New Rules", Giddens specifically wrote:


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Giddens' theory of structuration explores the question of whether it is individuals or social forces that shape our social reality. He eschews extreme positions, arguing that although people are not entirely free to choose their own actions and their knowledge is limited, they nonetheless are the agency which reproduces the social structure and leads to social change. His ideas find an echo in the philosophy of the modernist poet Wallace Stevens, who suggests that we live in the tension between the shapes we take as the world acts upon us and the ideas of order that our imagination imposes upon the world. Giddens writes that the connection between structure and action is a fundamental element of social theory, structure and agency are a duality that cannot be conceived of apart from one another and his main argument is contained in his expression "duality of structure". At a basic level, this means that people make society, but they are at the same time constrained by it. Action and structure cannot be analysed separately as structures are created, maintained and changed through actions while actions are given meaningful form only through the background of the structure. The line of causality runs in both directions making it impossible to determine what is changing what. In Giddens own words from "New Rules", he states: structures are both constituted by human agency, and yet at the same time are the very medium of this constitution."


title: Anthony Giddens

text: In this regard, Giddens defines structures as consisting of rules and resources involving human action. Thus, the rules constrain the actions and the resources make it possible. He also differentiates between systems and structures. Systems display structural properties, but they are not structures themselves. He notes in his article "Functionalism: après la lutte" (1976) as follows: "To examine the structuration of a social system is to examine the modes whereby that system, through the application of generative rules and resources is produced and reproduced in social interaction."


title: Anthony Giddens

text: This process of structures producing and re-producing systems is called structuration. Systems here mean to Giddens "the situated activities of human agents" ("The Constitution of Society") and "the patterning of social relations across space-time" (ibid.). Structures are then "sets of rules and resources that individual actors draw upon in the practices that reproduce social systems" ("Politics, Sociology and Social Theory") and "systems of generative rules and sets, implicated in the articulation of social systems" ("The Constitution of Society"), existing virtually "out of time and out of space" ("New Rules"). Structuration therefore means that relations that took shape in the structure can exist out of time and place. In other words, independent of the context in which they are created. An example is the relationship between a teacher and a student. When they come across each other in another context, say on the street, the hierarchy between them is still preserved.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Structure can act as a constraint on action, but it also enables action by providing common frames of meaning. Consider the example of language: structure of language is represented by the rules of syntax that rule out certain combinations of words. However, the structure also provides rules that allow new actions to occur, enabling us to create new, meaningful sentences. Structures should not be conceived as "simply placing constrains upon human agency, but as enabling" ("New Rules"). Giddens suggests that structures (traditions, institutions, moral codes and other sets of expectations—established ways of doing things) are generally quite stable, but they can be changed, especially through the unintended consequences of action when people start to ignore them, replace them, or reproduce them differently.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Actors or agents employ the social rules appropriate to their culture, ones that they have learned through socialisation and experience. These rules together with the resources at their disposal are used in social interactions. Rules and resources employed in this manner are not deterministic, but they are applied reflexively by knowledgeable actors, albeit that actors’ awareness may be limited to the specifics of their activities at any given time. Thus, the outcome of action is not totally predictable.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Structuration is very useful in synthesising micro and macro issues. On a micro scale, one of individuals' internal sense of self and identity, consider the example of a family in which we are increasingly free to choose our own mates and how to relate with them which creates new opportunities yet also more work as the relationship becomes a reflexive project that has to be interpreted and maintained. At the same time, this micro-level change cannot be explained only by looking at the individual level as people did not spontaneously change their minds about how to live and neither can we assume they were directed to do so by social institutions and the state.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: On a macro scale, one of the state and social organisations like multinational capitalist corporations, consider the example of globalisation which offers vast new opportunities for investment and development, but crises—like the Asian financial crisis—can affect the entire world, spreading far outside the local setting in which they first developed and last but not least directly influences individuals. A serious explanation of such issues must lie somewhere within the network of macro and micro forces. These levels should not be treated as unconnected and in fact they have significant relation to one another.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: To illustrate this relationship, Giddens discusses changing attitudes towards marriage in developed countries. He claims that any effort to explain this phenomenon solely in terms of macro or micro level causes would result in a circular cause and consequence. Social relationships and visible sexuality (micro-level change) are related to the decline of religion and the rise of rationality (macro-level change), but with changes in the laws relating to marriage and sexuality (macro) as well, change caused by different practices and changing attitudes on the level of everyday lives (micro). Practices and attitudes in turn can be affected by social movements (for example, women's liberation and egalitarianism), a macro-scale phenomena. However, the movements usually grow out of everyday life grievances—a micro-scale phenomenon.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: All of this is increasingly tied in with mass media, one of our main providers of information. The media do not merely reflect the social world yet also actively shape it, being central to modern reflexivity. In "Media, Gender and Identity", David Gauntlett writes:


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Another example explored by Giddens is the emergence of romantic love which Giddens ("The Transformation of Intimacy") links with the rise of the narrative of the self type of self-identity, stating: "Romantic love introduced the idea of a narrative into an individual's life". Although the history of sex clearly demonstrates that passion and sex are not modern phenomena, the discourse of romantic love is said to have developed from the late 18th century. Romanticism, the 18th- and 19th-century European macro-level cultural movement, is responsible for the emergence of the novel—a relatively early form of mass media. The growing literacy and popularity of novels fed back into the mainstream lifestyle and the romance novel proliferated the stories of ideal romantic life narratives on a micro-level, giving the romantic love an important and recognized role in the marriage-type relationship.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Consider also the transformation of intimacy. Giddens asserts that intimate social relationships have become democratised so that the bond between partners—even within a marriage—has little to do with external laws, regulations or social expectations, but instead it is based on the internal understanding between two people—a trusting bond based on emotional communication. Where such a bond ceases to exist, modern society is generally happy for the relationship to be dissolved. Thus, we have "a democracy of the emotions in everyday life" ("Runaway World", 1999).


title: Anthony Giddens

text: A democracy of the emotions—the democratising of everyday life—is an ideal, more or less approximated to in the diverse contexts of everyday life. There are many societies, cultures and contexts in which it remains far from reality—where sexual oppression is an everyday phenomenon. In "The Transformation of Intimacy", Giddens introduces the notion of plastic sexuality—sexuality freed from an intrinsic connection with reproduction and hence open to innovation and experimentation. What was once open only to elites becomes generalised with the advent of mass contraception as sexuality and identity become far more fluid than in the past. These changes are part and parcel of wider transformations affecting the self and self-identity.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Inevitably, Giddens concludes that all social change stems from a mixture of micro- and macro-level forces.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Giddens says that in the post-traditional order self-identity is reflexive. It is not a quality of a moment, but instead an account of a person's life. Giddens writes:


title: Anthony Giddens

text: More than ever before, we have access to information that allows us to reflect on the causes and consequences of our actions. At the same time, we are faced with dangers related to unintended consequences of our actions and by our reliance on the knowledge of experts. We create, maintain and revise a set of biographical narratives, social roles and lifestyles—the story of who we are and how we came to be where we are now. We are increasingly free to choose what we want to do and who we want to be, although Giddens contends that wealth gives access to more options. However, increased choice can be both liberating and troubling. Liberating in the sense of increasing the likelihood of one's self-fulfilment and troubling in form of increased emotional stress and time needed to analyse the available choices and minimise risk of which we are increasingly aware, or what Giddens sums up as the manufacturing uncertainty. While in earlier, traditional societies we would be provided with that narrative and social role, in the post-traditional society we are usually forced to create one ourselves. As Giddens puts it: "What to do? How to act? Who to be? These are focal questions for everyone living in circumstances of late modernity—and ones which, on some level or another, all of us answer, either discursively or through day-to-day social behaviour."


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Giddens' recent work has been concerned with the question of what is characteristic about social institutions in various points of history. Giddens agrees that there are very specific changes that mark our current era. However, he argues that it is not a post-modern era, but instead it is just a "radicalised modernity era" (similar to Zygmunt Bauman's concept of liquid modernity), produced by the extension of the same social forces that shaped the previous age. Nonetheless, Giddens differentiates between pre-modern, modern and late or high modern societies and does not dispute that important changes have occurred but takes a neutral stance towards those changes, saying that it offers both unprecedented opportunities and unparalleled dangers. He also stresses that we have not really gone beyond modernity as it is just a developed, detraditionalised, radicalised late modernity. Thus, the phenomena that some have called postmodern are to Giddens nothing more than the most extreme instances of a developed modernity. Along with Ulrich Beck and Scott Lash, he endorses the term "reflexive modernisation" as a more accurate description of the processes associated with the second modernity since it opposes itself in its earlier version instead of opposing traditionalism, endangering the very institutions it created such as the national state, the political parties or the nuclear family.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Giddens concentrates on a contrast between traditional (pre-modern) culture and post-traditional (modern) culture. In traditional societies, individual actions need not be extensively thought about because available choices are already determined (by the customs, traditions and so on). In contrast, in post-traditional society people (actors or agents) are much less concerned with the precedents set by earlier generations and they have more choices, due to flexibility of law and public opinion. However, this means that individual actions now require more analysis and thought before they are taken. Society is more reflexive and aware, something Giddens is fascinated with, illustrating it with examples ranging from state governance to intimate relationships. Giddens examines three realms in particular, namely the experience of identity, connections of intimacy and political institutions.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: According to Giddens, the most defining property of modernity is that we are disembedded from time and space. In pre-modern societies, space was the area in which one moved and time was the experience one had while moving. In modern societies, the social space is no longer confined by the boundaries set by the space in which one moves. One can now imagine what other spaces look like even if he has never been there. In this regard, Giddens talks about virtual space and virtual time. Another distinctive property of modernity lies in the field of knowledge.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: In pre-modern societies, it was the elders who possessed the knowledge as they were definable in time and space. In modern societies, we must rely on expert systems. These are not present in time and space, but we must trust them. Even if we trust them, we know that something could go wrong as there is always a risk we have to take. Even the technologies which we use and which transform constraints into means hold risks. Consequently, there is always a heightened sense of uncertainty in contemporary societies. It is also in this regard that Giddens uses the image of a juggernaut as modernity is said to be like an unsteerable juggernaut travelling through space.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Humanity tries to steer it, but as long as the modern institutions with all their uncertainty endure, then we will never be able to influence its course. The uncertainty can be managed by reembedding the expert-systems into the structures which we are accustomed to.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Another characteristic is enhanced reflexivity, both at the level of individuals and at the level of institutions. The latter requires an explanation as in modern institutions there is always a component which studies the institutions themselves for the purpose of enhancing its effectiveness. This enhanced reflexivity was enabled as language became increasingly abstract with the transition from pre-modern to modern societies, becoming institutionalised into universities. It is also in this regard that Giddens talks about double hermeneutica as every action has two interpretations. One is from the actor himself, the other of the investigator who tries to give meaning to the action he is observing. However, the actor who performs the action can get to know the interpretation of the investigator and therefore change his own interpretation, or his further line of action.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: According to Giddens, this is the reason that positive science is never possible in the social sciences as every time an investigator tries to identify causal sequences of action, the actors can change their further line of action. However, the problem is that conflicting viewpoints in social science result in a disinterest of the people. For example, when scientists do not agree about the greenhouse effect, people would withdraw from that arena and deny that there is a problem. Therefore, the more the sciences expand, the more uncertainty there is in the modern society. In this regard, the juggernaut gets even more steerless as Giddens states:


title: Anthony Giddens

text: In the age of late and reflexive modernity and post-scarcity economy, the political science is being transformed. Giddens notes that there is a possibility that "life politics" (the politics of self-actualisation) may become more visible than "emancipatory politics" (the politics of inequality); that new social movements may lead to more social change than political parties; and that the reflexive project of the self and changes in gender and sexual relations may lead the way via the "democratisation of democracy" to a new era of Habermasian "dialogic democracy" in which differences are settled and practices ordered through discourse rather than violence or the commands of authority.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Relying on his past familiar themes of reflexivity and system integration which places people into new relations of trust and dependency with each other and their governments, Giddens argues that the political concepts of left and right are now breaking down as a result of many factors, most centrally the absence of a clear alternative to capitalism and the eclipse of political opportunities based on the social class in favour of those based on lifestyle choices.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Giddens moves away from explaining how things are to the more demanding attempt of advocacy about how they ought to be. In "Beyond Left and Right" (1994), Giddens criticises market socialism and constructs a six-point framework for a reconstituted radical politics:


title: Anthony Giddens

text: "The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy" (1998) provides the framework within which the Third Way, also termed by Giddens as the radical centre, is justified. In addition, "The Third Way" supplies a broad range of policy proposals aimed at what Giddens calls the "progressive centre-left" in British politics. According to Giddens: " overall aim of third way politics should be to help citizens pilot their way through the major revolutions of our time: globalisation, transformations in personal life and our relationship to nature." Giddens remains fairly optimistic about the future of humanity: "There is no single agent, group or movement that, as Marx's proletariat was supposed to do, can carry the hopes of humanity, but there are many points of political engagement which offer good cause for optimism."


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Giddens discards the possibility of a single, comprehensive, all-connecting ideology or political programme without a duality of structure. Instead, he advocates going after the small pictures, ones people can directly affect at their home, workplace or local community. To Giddens, this is a difference between pointless utopianism and useful utopian realism which he defines as envisaging "alternative futures whose very propagation might help them be realised" ("The Consequences of Modernity"). By utopian, he means that this is something new and extraordinary, and by realistic he stresses that this idea is rooted in the existing social processes and can be viewed as their simple extrapolation. Such a future has at its centre a more socialised, demilitarised and planetary-caring global world order variously articulated within green, women's and peace movements and within the wider democratic movement.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: The Third Way was not just a work of abstract theory as it influenced a range of centre-left political parties across the world—in Europe, Latin America and Australasia. Although close to New Labour in the United Kingdom, Giddens dissociated himself from many of the interpretations of the Third Way made in the sphere of day-to-day politics. For him, it was not a succumbing to neoliberalism or the dominance of capitalist markets. The point was to get beyond both market fundamentalism and traditional top-down socialism to make the values of the centre-left count in a globalising world. He argued that "the regulation of financial markets is the single most pressing issue in the world economy" and that "global commitment to free trade depends upon effective regulation rather than dispenses with the need for it".


title: Anthony Giddens

text: In 1999, Giddens delivered the BBC Reith Lectures on the subject of runaway world, subsequently published as a book of that title. The aim was to introduce the concept and implications of globalisation to a lay audience. He was the first Reith Lecturer to deliver the lectures in different places around the world and the first to respond directly to e-mails that came in while he was speaking. The lectures were delivered in London, Washington, New Delhi and Hong Kong and responded to by local audiences. Giddens received the Asturias Prize for the social sciences in 2002. The award has been labelled the Spanish Nobel Prize, but it stretches well beyond the sphere of science. Other recipients of the prize that year included Woody Allen, the inventor of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee and conductor Daniel Barenboim.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: On two visits to Libya in 2006 and 2007, organised by the Boston-based consultancy firm Monitor Group, Giddens met with Muammar Gaddafi. Giddens has declined to comment on the financial compensation he received. "The Guardian" reported in March 2011 that Libya's government engaged Monitor Group as advisor on matters of public relations. Monitor Group allegedly received 2 million pounds in return for undertaking a "cleansing campaign" to improve Libya's image. In a letter to Abdullah Senussi, a high-ranking Libyan official in July 2006, Monitor Group reported as follows:


title: Anthony Giddens

text: We will create a network map to identify significant figures engaged or interested in Libya today. ... We will identify and encourage journalists, academics and contemporary thinkers who will have interest in publishing papers and articles on Libya. ... We are delighted that after a number of conversations, Lord Giddens has now accepted our invitation to visit Libya in July.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Giddens' first visit to Libya resulted in articles in the "New Statesman", "El País" and "La Repubblica", where he argued that the country had been dramatically transformed. In the "New Statesman", he wrote: "Gaddafi's 'conversion' may have been driven partly by the wish to escape sanctions, but I get the strong sense it is authentic and there is a lot of motive power behind it. Saif Gaddafi is a driving force behind the rehabilitation and potential modernisation of Libya. Gaddafi Sr, however, is authorising these processes". During the second visit, Monitor Group organised a panel of three thinkers (Giddens, Gaddafi, and Benjamin Barber, author of "Jihad vs. McWorld") chaired by Sir David Frost.


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Giddens remarked of his meetings with Gaddafi as such: "You usually get about half an hour with a political leader". He also recalls the following: "My conversation lasts for more than three. Gaddafi is relaxed and clearly enjoys intellectual conversation. He likes the term 'third way' because his own political philosophy is a version of this idea. He makes many intelligent and perceptive points. I leave enlivened and encouraged".


title: Anthony Giddens

text: Giddens introduces reflexivity and in information societies information gathering is considered as a routinised process for the greater protection of the nation. Information gathering is known as the concept of individuation. Individuality comes as a result of individuation as people are given more informed choices. The more information the government has about a person, the more entitlements are given to the citizens. The process of information gathering helps government to identify enemies of the state, singling out individuals that are suspected of plotting activities against the state. The advent of technology has brought national security to a completely new level. Historically, the military relied on armed force to deal with threats. With the development of ICT, biometric scans, language translation, real time programs and other related intelligent programs have made the identification of terrorist activities much easier compared to the past. The analysing of algorithm patterns in biometric databases have given government new leads. Data about citizens can be collected through identification and credential verification companies. Hence, surveillance and ICT goes hand-in-hand with information gathering. In other words, the collection of information is necessary as stringent safeguards for the protection of the nation, preventing it from imminent attacks.