Thanks to Rover and Ghost for highlighting WMI's latest response to FDIC's request for relief from the stay previously imposed in the BK case. All SINCERE longs should read this brief carefully. I know it's 26 pages of very dense legal argument, but it is brilliant, devastating and full of positive implications for WAMU longs. I would really love to hear Bop's insights on these developments.
Documento Importante:
http://www.ghostofwamu.com/documents/08-12229/08-12229-1872.pdf
Caveat: It's 10 p.m. PST, I've just returned from a 500-mile drive and 5 days of fun-in-the-sun and surfing in San Diego, and have a couple of scotches under my belt, so I'm not really not in a position for incisive comment here (nlu55 isn't the only one who has a nightcap), but allow me to observe:
(1) This response to FDIC is subtle and yet overwhelmingly correct on so many different levels. One begins to see wheels-within-wheels in WMI's previous legal strategy. It's almost as if, a year ago, WMI was beginning to set up FDIC and JPM for this point, today.
(2) The argument about WMBfsb (which holds almost all of WMI's $4B disputed deposits) having passed (obviously) to JPM OUTSIDE OF the FDIC receivership makes one conclude that that is precisely why, sensing the possible FDIC takeover move in Sept. 2008, Weil (who was already retained by WMI) counseled WMI to move its deposits to the "little bank" (fsb) in order to stymie the FDIC and JPM, and protect those legitimate deposits.
(3) Weil & its co-counsel (Richards, Layton & Finger and Elliott Greenleaf, and Quinn Emanuel) saw the FDIC's 9.5 argument coming a LONG time ago and were totally prepared, ready, and loaded for bear when it came. There is no way that they could have gotten such a thorough, authoritative, and densely documented brief together so quickly unless it was already anticipated. This team is the best!
(4) On page 20 (note the bold-faced, italicized passage) and page 22 (noting the FDIC's "newly-minted threat to reverse course and do what it aid it wouldn't do . . .") WMI's attorneys are really amping up the rhetoric and high-lighting the FDIC's hypocrisy and its transparent collusion with JPM to make a mockery of the bankruptcy court by "unseemingly gamesmanship". This cannot but help make THJMW incensed at both JPM and FDIC.
(5) In making it's argument for relief from the stay order, FDIC has totally undermined its argument against the motion for summary judgment.
Rover and others on other threads today have made other pertinent observations, with which I concur. But beyond those, I see this brief as a tipping point, where WMI has thrown down a gauntlet, of sorts. Now that the procedural niceties of "due process of law" have been satisfied, I expect Judge Walrath to deny the FDIC's request to lift the stay in short order and to grant the motion for summary judgment soon thereafter.
IMHO . . . GLTA
