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To: The Duke of URL© who wrote (69)	7/5/2001 11:19:48 AM
From: C.K. Houston	Respond to of 306849

Agree on all points. <Of course it goes without saying that the owners of the s and ls kicked back a lot of money to our august legislators.> Yep. Besides 'Keating Five', there were so, so many more. Even Alan Greenspan helped out with all the smoke & mirrors stuff. In '85 when he was a private economist, he lobbied on behalf on Lincoln Savings & Loan and wrote regulators and congress on their behalf. LOL - "[Lincoln] transformed itself into a financially strong institution that presents no foreseeable risk to the government.". What a joke. Lincoln subsequently collapsed in ’89 --- the most costly S&L failure in U.S. history. This 'pro forma' earnings stuff going on right now is utter bullsht. It should be illegal. Just hides the truth and reassures little guys, and delays the inevitable. S&Ls did the exact same thing back in the '80's, with disastrous results. In '82 they stopped using GAAP accounting standards and started using something called RAP (similar to Pro Forma). When FDIC shifted thru the ashes many years later, they come to find out that of all those S&Ls govt was insuring ... by 1983 ... 9% of S&Ls were insolvent by GAAP standards and 35% still sustained losses! Allowing RAP accounting standards to continue for so long, hid the truth and made the situation worse. They didn't force S&Ls to start using GAAP again until 1989! <This is the same thing that happened in 1929. That's why the regulations were there in the first place. JUST LIKE THE REGULATIONS THAT PREVENTED BANKS FROM BEING STOCK BROKERS-- same reasoning.*> And now that safety net's gone with the repeal of Glass-Steagall in Nov '99. Seems like history's repeating itself. So many white collar crooks out there. Really disgusts me. The more I know, the more cynical I become. Cheryl

To: The Duke of URL© who wrote (69)	7/5/2001 4:30:55 PM
From: Dave	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

<<Deregulation of S&L’s was a BIG MISTAKE!!>> And it put the owners of s and ls in business with free money, at the taxpayers expense of course. I think you've just demonstrated that deregulation was not a mistake at all. That kind of free money doesn't just happen due to incompetence. It takes a lot of lobbying and government favors to orchestrate such a large-scale transfer of wealth from taxpayers to Texas bigshots. Does anybody remember the Bush family's front-line role in that wealth transfer? Now, due in part to money and power derived from that massive wealth transfer, Texas powermongers have bought their way even further into the White House and into our pockets. In just the last year or so, Texas power companies have transferred over six billion dollars of wealth from California's taxpayer pockets into their own, with no end in sight, and with smug White House approval. The Texan money machine may be the only place where any real wealth is left after the coming recession. And that's a frightening prospect. Dave