Word: thrifts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Until last week financier Charles Keating had insisted on being the final witness at congressional hearings on the $2.5 billion disaster at Lincoln Savings & Loan, so that he could rebut the witnesses who had accused him of staving off a federal crackdown on his troubled thrift by lavishing money on influential politicians. But as the aggressive ex-fighter pilot, Olympic swimmer and pillar of the Phoenix business community was being sworn in before the House Banking Committee, his right hand trembled noticeably. His tanned face flushed, his 6-ft. 5-in. frame slumped, Keating, 66, demanded that television cameras...
Unlike the Senators who seek campaign contributions from the likes of Keating, Wall had nothing to gain but the continued esteem of the thrift industry for his consistently low estimates of the extent of the savings and loan debacle. He is a stolid former city planner from Salt Lake City whose only extravagance seems to be his natty suits and monogrammed shirts. As the top aide to Republican Senator Jake Garn of Utah when Garn was chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Wall became a favorite of S & L owners. Says Senator Leach of Wall's 1987 appointment: "The industry...
...staff director of the Banking Committee in 1981, Wall drafted the industry's dream deregulation bill, the Garn-St. Germain Act. That law created a new breed of thrift operator. In came highflyers like Keating who shifted their depositors' money (now insured for $100,000 instead of $40,000) from unexciting residential mortgages to potentially more lucrative but indisputably riskier shopping malls, resort developments, energy-generating windmills. The new breed awarded themselves seven-digit salaries, private jets, hunting preserves and yachts on which to entertain members of Congress. Keating and his associates took $21 million from Lincoln even...
...have passed those ideas on to their kids." Little wonder that some favor the retro boom, based on a fascination with the 1950s, while others are enchanted with the 1960s. Vests and jeans, the preferred accoutrements of the '60s, are making a comeback. A funky boutique called the Chicago Thrift Shop not only offers Levi's jeans in both 501 and 505 models but also carries them used and tattered for that slightly disheveled look now back in favor...
...former owner of California's Lincoln Savings and Loan and a defendant in a lawsuit involving racketeering, fraud and conspiracy in using the institution's funds. After the smoke clears, bailout of this S&L is expected to reach $2.5 billion, making it the nation's costliest thrift failure. When asked whether his fat contributions to the five Senators influenced them to take up his cause, Keating replied, "I want to say in the most forceful way I can: I certainly hope...