An interesting tidbit from one of the articles I linked to in my earlier post about option ARMs. From Slate, April 15, 2008:

Just two banks, Washington Mutual and Countrywide, wrote more than $300 billion worth of option ARMs in the three years from 2005 to 2007, concentrated in California. Others—IndyMac, Golden West (the creator of the option ARM, and now a part of Wachovia)—wrote many billions more.

IndyMac Bank failed last month. Countrywide Financial was on the brink of collapse in January when Bank of America announced that it would buy the failing lender. Shares in Wachovia, which absorbed Golden West, plummeted today after an analyst advised investors to sell. Fully one-fourth of Wachovia’s entire loan portfolio consists of option ARMs.

That leaves one…