The Greatest-Ever Bank Robbery: The Collapse of the Savings and Loan Industry

Mayer ( The Bankers ) here sounds a roaring indictment of grand thievery in the deregulated savings and loan industry, for which taxpayers are being billed billions in restitution costs for scores of S & L failures. Citing Charles H. Keating's Lincoln S & L among many others, Mayer not only denounces enormous profits based on Federal Deposit Insurance but suggests that members of Congress, bank regulators, Wall Street investment bankers and top accounting and legal firms condoned the pyramiding of speculative, overvalued and even nonexistent assets--all in return for campaign contributions, huge fees and self-perpetuating commissions. Names are named and nuts and bolts revealed, but the book's greatest virtue at times becomes its only drawback: the numbingly detailed intricacies--and blatant knavery--of each case history is almost beyond comprehension. BOMC and Fortune Book Club alternates. (Nov.)