Late yesterday the Western banking company -- sometimes touted as the natural future buyer of PNC Financial, which took over Mercantile -- disclosed big mortgage problems. Interesting that these are home equity loans -- second mortgages -- so presumably they weren't issued to investors who bought a property and simply walked away. From the AP:

After avoiding major trouble most of the year, Wells Fargo & Co. has finally bogged down in the mortgage muck that's muddying one major bank after another.

Wells Fargo, the fifth-largest U.S. bank, waded into the mess by saying it will recognize $1.4 billion in losses in the fourth quarter on home equity loans that aren't being repaid as the real estate slump deepens in California, the Midwest and other major markets.

Until Wells Fargo's disclosure late Tuesday, the San Francisco-based bank had been largely unscathed by the turmoil that has battered a long list of other major lenders.

"Clearly, this is a disappointment because (Wells) had been seen as better managers of credit than many other big banks," said RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Morford. "But now they have a big blemish on them, too."