The kind of Democrat I endorse works to support the New Deal.

[Ichingcarpenter]

1. I was also looking at the savings and loan crap game

and wondered why this went under the radar during the
election between Bush and Dukakis.



the Savings and Loan scandal



There are several ways in which the Bush family plays into the Savings and Loan scandal, which involves not only many members of the Bush family but also many other politicians that are still in office and still part of the Bush Jr. administration today. Jeb Bush, George Bush Sr., and his son Neil Bush have all been implicated in the Savings and Loan Scandal, which cost American tax payers over $1.4 TRILLION dollars (note that this is about one quarter of our national debt).

Between 1981 and 1989, when George Bush finally announced that there was a Savings and Loan Crisis to the world, the Reagan/Bush administration worked to cover up Savings and Loan problems by reducing the number and depth of examinations required of S&Ls as well as attacking political opponents who were sounding early alarms about the S&L industry. Industry insiders were aware of significant S&L problems as early 1986 that they felt would require a bailout. This information was kept from the media until after Bush had won the 1988 elections.

Jeb Bush defaulted on a $4.56 million loan from Broward Federal Savings in Sunrise, Florida. After federal regulators closed the S&L, the office building that Jeb used the $4.56 million to finance was reappraised by the regulators at $500,000, which Bush and his partners paid. The taxpayers had to pay back the remaining 4 million plus dollars.

Neil Bush was the most widely targeted member of the Bush family by the press in the S&L scandal. Neil became director of Silverado Savings and Loan at the age of 30 in 1985. Three years later the institution was belly up at a cost of $1.6 billion to tax payers to bail out.

The basic actions of Neil Bush in the S&L scandal are as follows:

Neil received a $100,000 "loan" from Ken Good, of Good International, with no obligation to pay any of the money back.

Good was a large shareholder in JNB Explorations, Neil Bush's oil-exploration company.

Neil failed to disclose this conflict-of-interest when loans were given to Good from Silverado, because the money was to be used in joint venture with his own JNB. This was in essence giving himself a loan from Silverado through a third party.

Neil then helped Silverado S&L approve Good International for a $900,000 line of credit.

Good defaulted on a total $32 million in loans from Silverado.

During this time Neil Bush did not disclose that $3 million of the $32 million that Good was defaulting on was actually for investment in JNB, his own company.

Good subsequently raised Bush's JNB salary from $75,000 to $125,000 and granted him a $22,500 bonus.

Neil Bush maintained that he did not see how this constituted a conflict of interest.

Neil approved $106 million in Silverado loans to another JNB investor, Bill Walters.

Neil also never formally disclosed his relationship with Walters and Walters also defaulted on his loans, all $106 million of them.

Neil Bush was charged with criminal wrongdoing in the case and ended up paying $50,000 to settle out of court. The chief of Silverado S&L was sentenced to 3.5 years in jail for pleading guilty to $8.7 million in theft. (Keep in mind that you can get more jail time for holding up a gas station for $50.)

Today Neil Bush is working on closing a deal in Florida, where his brother Jeb is governor, to sell a software package to schools with his startup company Ignite.

Update 11/28/2003: Some of Neil Bush's business deals have been exposed in his recent divorce case. For more on this see:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/112703A.shtml

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/01/26/neil_bush/index.html

It should also be noted that shortly after news of Neil Bush’s involvement in the S&L scandal hit the press his father, George Bush Sr., announced the Desert Storm campaign in Iraq, which subsequently had the result of making Neil’s name quickly fade from the headlines. In addition, while Neil Bush's divorce proceeding were exposing more backroom Bush dealings, America was once again bombarded with war propaganda for Operation Iraq Freedom.


http://rationalrevolution.net/war/bush_family_and_the_s.htm

Dukakis Faults G.O.P. for Savings Crisis


In a statement released today, the Democratic nominee said the Reagan Administration had unleashed the savings industry into a deregulated environment without providing adequate supervision to avoid excessive speculation and risk taking. The statement said nearly 1,000 savings institutions are either insolvent or close to insolvency and losing almost $1 billiion a month.

''The Reagan-Bush Administration allowed thrifts to set aside the business of financing affordable homes and plunge head first into risky speculation,'' Mr. Dukakis's statement said. ''And then they relaxed all the oversight designed to protect depositors at savings and loans.''

''It's a crisis that George Bush could have headed off,'' he said. Return to 'Traditional Role'

The Massachusetts Governor added that in a Dukakis administration, ''We will see to it that savings and loans return to their traditional role of financing affordable homes for American families, instead of speculating in unsafe investments.'' But the Bush campaign rejected the Democrat's claims. ''He is trying to very hard to obscure where the blame really lies,'' said Mark Goodin, a Bush campaign spokesman. ''It lies with his own party. For 18 months they dragged their heals.'' He added that when the legislation passed, ''it was at a funding level substantially under what the Administration had recommended and attached a plethora of pet projects and new regulations, making it far more difficult for the Government to deal with the problem.''

Although many savings industry experts had anticipated that the crisis would eventually become part of partisan bickering, some of them had predicted that both sides would be hesitant to raise the issue. Many analysts trace ill-advised policies and legislation to both Republicans and Democrats, and few have come up with solutions other than a politically costly taxpayer bailout.

With 500 savings institutions insolvent and another 400 to 500 institutions close to insolvency, experts agree it is an issue that will have to be addressed by Congress and the new President. Dukakis First to Attack


http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/30/us/dukakis-faults-gop-for-savings-crisis.html