Kill All the Bankers?

There is a lot of anger out there over the financial crisis. The need to direct that anger at someone, the credit crunch equivalent of a Charles Keating or a Michael Milken, is palpable.

But the hunting season is already out of control: A skit on Saturday Night Live advocated the murder of an elderly couple.

The skit, mocking the $700 billion bailout package passed by the House on Friday, portrays a C-Span news conference with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She introduces as victims of the credit crisis, Herb and Marion Sandler, who built Golden West into a California savings and loan powerhouse before selling it to Wachovia for $24 billion in 2006, as victims of the financial crisis.

You don't seem like a victim, she asks the actor portraying Herb Sandler. "No, that would be Wachovia Bank," he replies, as a caption underneath reads:

People who should be shot.

See the video here.

Golden West was a leader in option adjustable-rate mortgages, and as a result is an albatross around Wachovia, whose fate as the prey of either Wells Fargo or Citigroup is still undecided. While the Sandlers have argued that Golden West is not to blame for Wachovia's woes, most analysts would disagree.

The A.R.M. business and the fact that the Sandlers reaped $2 billion from the sale certainly makes them a justifiable target of critics.

But the purchase of Golden West and its subsequent management were mistakes made by Wachovia's management. Putting the Sandlers in near-literal crosshairs when there are chief executives who took foolish risks or misrepresented their crushing exposures to mortgages as well as regulators who were asleep at the wheel is vicious and unfair.

Herb Sandler, who is 77, reacted angrily in talking to the Associated Press on Sunday.

"I have been listening to this crap for two years," he said. "We are being unfairly tarred. People have been telling us to speak out for some time, but we didn't think it was appropriate. That was clearly a mistake."

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