Remembering the S&L Crisis

[Thailandnotes]

In the early 1980’s I was a second grade teacher in Fairfax County, Virginia. The salary was okay, but I was often broke at the end of the month. I worked various jobs on the weekends. One of my friends was a carpenter/handyman who worked for a Savings and Loan. He would occasionally hire me to help him finish small projects that had to be done by Monday morning. We would install safes or trim out projection rooms, fancy finish work in the high rise headquarters early on Sunday mornings when most of the offices were empty. The corruption was in plain sight even on Sunday mornings. Cocaine was everywhere. Many of the secretaries were call girls. The big beautiful tropical plants were constantly being stolen. A couple of years later during the height of the prosecution that William Black refers to, my wife and I had moved to Bangkok. I walked down to the local newsstand and ordered a subscription to the International Herald Tribune. The next day, a guy on a motorbike hurled it over the wall. There were only three ads in the whole paper. One was a quarter-page Interpol wanted poster for the owner of the S&L mentioned above. He was a scoundrel. They got him. And he spent many years in jail.

[swgprop]

Re: Remembering the S&L Crisis

The corruption was in plain sight even on Sunday mornings. Cocaine was everywhere. Many of the secretaries were call girls. The big beautiful tropical plants were constantly being stolen.

Aaah, the good old days.

[Slimprofits]

Re: Remembering the S&L Crisis

Book recommendation: Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans
~ Stephen Pizzo, Mary Fricker, Paul Muolo

full text available on the Internet Archive website http://www.archive.org/details/insid...ting00pizzrich

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Bound to be controversial, this impressive expose by three journalists charges that the S & L industry was taken over by a national network of Mafiosi, corrupt thrift officers, appraisers, auditors and arms- and drug-dealers laundering money, all of whom exploited opportunities provided by the 1982 deregulation. Fortified with unlimited broker deposits, the network plundered hundreds of federally insured thrifts. The authors discount the role of high oil prices, the Sunbelt recession and other factors as catalysts in the S & L disaster. Excepting Federal Home Loan Bank Board chairman Erwin Gray, who fought to limit deposit brokerage, Pizzo, Fricker and Muolo accuse the Justice Department, the courts and other federal and state agencies for ignoring or covering up four years of fraud. They also maintain that the guilty have not been punished and little of the loot has been recovered out of official fear of revelation.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Three investigative reporters trace what has happened to the savings-and-loan industry since President Reagan signed into law the Garn-St. Germain bill which deregulated the way thrift institutions can invest money in order to better compete with financial firms that offered more attractive alternatives to savings-and-loan depositors. Some of the results involved shoddy investments that ruined banks and put the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation in deep financial trouble. The authors chronicle some of the more serious cases that involved illegal schemes, organized crime, greedy bank officials, and scandal. Like a good mystery, this is hard to put down, and if the reader has trouble with the jargon, there is a good glossary. A very timely and popular item.
- Steven J. Mayover, Free Lib . of Philadelphia
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

[don]

Re: Remembering the S&L Crisis

Like Nixon and his shenanigans (not to mention he would be waaay too progressive to get today's GOP nomination), the S & L frauds look quaint by comparison to our bankster R & P (Rape & Pillage).

[don]

Re: Remembering the S&L Crisis

Book recommendation: Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans
~ Stephen Pizzo, Mary Fricker, Paul Muolo

full text available on the Internet Archive website http://www.archive.org/details/insid...ting00pizzrich

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Bound to be controversial, this impressive expose by three journalists charges that the S & L industry was taken over by a national network of Mafiosi, corrupt thrift officers, appraisers, auditors and arms- and drug-dealers laundering money, all of whom exploited opportunities provided by the 1982 deregulation. Fortified with unlimited broker deposits, the network plundered hundreds of federally insured thrifts. The authors discount the role of high oil prices, the Sunbelt recession and other factors as catalysts in the S & L disaster. Excepting Federal Home Loan Bank Board chairman Erwin Gray, who fought to limit deposit brokerage, Pizzo, Fricker and Muolo accuse the Justice Department, the courts and other federal and state agencies for ignoring or covering up four years of fraud. They also maintain that the guilty have not been punished and little of the loot has been recovered out of official fear of revelation.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Three investigative reporters trace what has happened to the savings-and-loan industry since President Reagan signed into law the Garn-St. Germain bill which deregulated the way thrift institutions can invest money in order to better compete with financial firms that offered more attractive alternatives to savings-and-loan depositors. Some of the results involved shoddy investments that ruined banks and put the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation in deep financial trouble. The authors chronicle some of the more serious cases that involved illegal schemes, organized crime, greedy bank officials, and scandal. Like a good mystery, this is hard to put down, and if the reader has trouble with the jargon, there is a good glossary. A very timely and popular item.
- Steven J. Mayover, Free Lib . of Philadelphia
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Sounds like the training program for Bernie Madoff's operation.