More from the stories-that-just-write-themselves department: FDIC shut down two banks this weekend, the Security Pacific Bank in Los Angeles and the Franklin Bank Corp (FBTX) in Houston. Who was at the helm of Frankln Bank? Lewis Ranieri. Oh dear:

Lewis Ranieri is credited with inventing mortgage-backed securities two decades ago, but apparently was unable to save his own company from getting ensnared in the home-loan bust.

The bank’s failure is a bitter irony because it is the mortgage securitization business of which Ranieri is known as a pioneer – the repackaging of home loans as bonds that are sold to investors – that was at the heart of the mortgage and credit crises. Last spring, the audit committee of the company’s board found in an investigation certain weaknesses in accounting, disclosure and other issues relating to residential real estate loans.

Here’s a BusinessWeek piece from 2004 where Ranieri was praised as everything from “revolutionary” to “alchemist” for creating the MBS, which is sad, because srsly who knew mortgage-backed securities would go from being backed by actual mortgages that someone might have wanted to pay to being backed by option ARMs on wood-and-stucco suburban shacks. Obvs not Lewis. Alas.

Bonus weekend irony coverage: This bank fail wasn’t the only fail to be had this week. Redemptions ahoy! Nobel-Prize winning economist Myron Scholes just had another hedge fund, Platinum Grove, implode. (Um, the first one was a little thing called Long-Term Capital Management.)