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I have no intention of being raped by the U.S.
government.
Charles H. Keating said that last week,
although he used to deplore such explicit language back
when he ran Citizens for Decent Literature.
Keating also ran Lincoln Savings & Loan in Irvine,
Calif. That's the outfit which stalled off the regulators
by pumping money into five senators' campaign funds. When
the regulators finally got to Lincoln in 1989, they seized
it for insolvency, but according to Keating, who has filed
a lawsuit to get it back, the seizure is rape.
Keating's institution alone will cost taxpayers $1.5 billion. Denver's Silverado amounts to another billion, all by itself. There, Ken Good could borrow $8 million, and then persuade Silverado to write off that loan at the same time that he was spending $3 million to buy into Neil Bush's oil company, when Bush was a director of Silverado who could vote on whether to forgive Good's loan.
It doesn't appear that Good and Bush were on the receiving end of any rape, and Keating doesn't much resemble a rape victim either. If you want to see who's getting raped by the U.S. government here, look in a mirror.
Just a few years ago, aggressive S&L's were shopping hard for money in the form of $100,000 deposits -- each such deposit fully insured by the federal government, of course. Those big deposits in turn were loaned out, to people like Ken Good who defaulted on their loans, or to friendly developers who were allowed to borrow more than their projects were worth.
When fiscal reality hit, these S&L's were insolvent with insufficient collateral for their loans. But Uncle Sam stood by the high-roller depositors, insuring that each would get his $100,000 back.
The total bill will run to at least $500 billion, which
comes to $2,000 from every man, woman and child in America.
The average American has $4,353 in savings accounts. So in
order to rescue the Americans with $100,000 deposits, the
government is taking $2,000 from those with $4,353.
Somebody's getting screwed here, and since the process is
occurring by force (of law), rape
is an appropriate
term.
Naturally, the Democrats have pointed gleeful fingers at the Republicans, since the S&L debacle occurred when Republicans were in the White House. But the Bush administration knows about S&L campaign contributions to congressional Democrats, and has warned that it's ready to bring that out if the Democrats try to make any political hay from the S&L scandal.
This reminds me of a nasty child-custody case whose
transcript I read. The judge concluded, If the court is
to believe the plaintiff, the defendant is a nymphomaniac
drug abuser who should never be near children. If the court
is to believe the defendant, the plaintiff is a spendthrift
alcoholic, totally unfit to raise children. Unfortunately,
both are quite correct.
The Reagan Republicans only went halfway in deregulating the S&L's; full deregulation would have meant removing federal deposit insurance, and we wouldn't have this expensive problem. The Democrats, rolling in campaign contributions from big-league S&L's, were happy to intercede with the regulators to postpone the day when the looting and raping had to stop.
Now each is accusing the other of gross irresponsibility. Unfortunately, both are quite correct.
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