Episode Details

In 2009, Joe Withrow was a young banker sitting inside Wells Fargo's loss mitigation department — in an obscure industrial park on the edge of town — watching the government and the banks quietly bury the 2008 mortgage crisis.

What he saw changed everything. Banks were rolling fees and penalties into modified loan balances, adding tens of thousands of dollars to mortgages on homes whose values were collapsing. Nobody was tracking loan-to-value ratios. And when Joe raised his hand and asked a basic question, his boss told him to keep his head down and his mouth shut.

This is where the Phoenician League begins. Episode 1 of the podcast — the inside story of the 2008 mortgage crisis from someone who was in the building.

Topics covered:

• The hidden incentive structure behind mortgage modifications
• How the government and banks partnered to make the crisis disappear — not solve it
• The moment Joe realized something was deeply wrong with the system
• Why asking questions was not acceptable inside the corporate banking world

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