Wachovia says housing downturn nowhere near over

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wachovia Corp (WB.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), which offers adjustable-rate mortgages that let borrowers decide how much to pay each month, believes the U.S. housing downturn is far from over, Chief Risk Officer Don Truslow said.

"It feels like we have a ways to go," Truslow said on a Deutsche Bank Securities Inc conference call. Referring to the nine innings of a baseball game, Truslow said he was "unsure" whether the downturn was in the third, fourth or fifth inning, but "we haven't reached the seventh-inning stretch."

Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia, the fourth-largest U.S. bank, on February 28 said it expected first-half loan losses to exceed 0.75 percent of loans on an annualized basis in 2008, higher than it had forecast two weeks earlier.

Chief Executive Ken Thompson also admitted in a letter to shareholders to "poor" timing in his $24.2 billion purchase in October 2006 of Golden West Financial Corp, a California mortgage lender. Thompson nevertheless affirmed his opinion of the quality of Golden West's franchise and staff.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)