Behind every number we cite are American families who are still suffering the effects of a man-made economic catastrophe. Our Subcommittee's goal is to construct a record of the facts in order to deepen public understanding of what went wrong; to inform the ongoing legislative debate about the need for financial reform; and to provide a foundation for building better defenses to protect Main Street from the excesses of Wall Street. Our first hearing dealt with the impact of high-risk mortgage lending, and focused on a case study of Washington Mutual Bank, known as WaMu, a thrift whose leaders embarked on a reckless strategy to pursue higher profits by emphasizing high-risk exotic loans. WaMu didn't just make loans that were likely to fail, creating hardship for borrowers and risk for the bank. It also built a conveyor belt that fed those toxic loans into the financial system like a polluter dumping poison into a river.