Synopsis
Using material from over one hundred interviews with government officials and industry leaders and declassified documents, the authors show how S&L leaders engaged in deliberate fraud, stealing from their own corporations to speculate on high-risk ventures.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1997-11-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 263 pages | | Height: | 9.3 in | | Width: | 6.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.2 in | | Weight: | 20.8 oz |
Publisher's Note
How did a handful of savings and loan executives bring about one of the worst financial disasters of the twentieth century? Examining the S&L crisis as a series of white-collar crimes unparalleled in the history of the United States, Kitty Calavita, Henry Pontell, and Robert Tillman debunk a number of the myths that permeate popular understanding of this multi-billion-dollar disaster. Tempted by the insurance net and federal deregulation aimed at encouraging growth in the banking industry, S&L leaders deliberately defrauded their depositors, stole from their own corporations, and speculated on high-risk ventures with government-insured capital. What the government ultimately chalked up to failed business investments and a sluggish economy, Calavita, Pontell, and Tillman identify as a new type of white-collar crime, committed deliberately against S&L customers and the government. Using material gathered in over one hundred interviews with government officials and recently declassified documents, Calavita, Pontell, and Tillman draw disturbing conclusions about the deliberate nature of the crimes, the political collusion they involved, and the leniency of the justice system in dealing with "big money" criminals.
Industry Reviews
The authors' rigorous examination of various relevant documents and interviews with key parties provide strong support for their claim that systematic insider fraud, as opposed simply to poor business judgment or adverse economic conditions, was a critical factor in the failure of so many thrifts. . . . Although various journalistic accounts of the S&L scandals have been published (e.g., Stephen Pizzo, Mary Fricker, and Paul Muolo's Inside Job, 1989), this well-written, thoroughly researched, and conceptually innovative work deepens understanding of a major form of contemporary white collar crime.
Annotation copyright H.W. Wilson Company.
Joyce
Big Money Crime is . . . vividly written, clearly argued, and scrupulously researched. . . . Social scientists Kitty Calavita, Henry N. Pontell, and Robert H. Tillman base their conclusions on three years of fieldwork within the S&L investigation, funded in part by the National Institute of Justice of the U.S. Department of Justice. A succinct and compelling account of a tsunami of white-collar criminality, [the work] is a timely antidote to the new conventional wisdom that the S&L crisis was an unavoidable tragedy. . . . The last defense of the S&L industry is that their crimes were really business deals too convoluted for the uninitiated to understand. . . . Big Money Crime cuts through this confusion, identifying 'hot deals,' looting, and covering up as the three main types of S&L crime.
Annotation copyright H.W. Wilson Company.
Joyce
This account of the S&L crisis by three academic authors (two social ecologists and a sociologist, respectively) claims that the fiasco cost American taxpayers $500 billion, counting the industry bailout. Although this doesn't come close to the $1 trillion Kathleen Day estimated in her S&L Hell, it's still enough for the authors to call this the worst economic calamity of the 20th century even without the breadlines. The authors portray a cast of "Gucci-clad" white-collar scam artists who took advantage of a burgeoning "casino" economy to bilk thrift institutions for personal gain. But the scale and complexity of the scams and insider dealing meant that the S&L crisis didn't get the attention it deserved partly because neither the federal government nor the states had the resources to fully prosecute, and because regular people felt bored and confused by the issue, "as if they've fallen behind in their high school algebra class," say the writers, quoting P. J. O'Rourke. Nonetheless, their brief, heavily researched account, supported by substantial funding from a wing of the U.S. Department of Justice, is an engrossing cautionary tale and detailed narrative of institutional fraud that the authors continually liken to organized crime. Disputing the theories of some economists that the S&L debacle was more the result of excessive risk-taking and abstract economic forces than "greedy wrongdoing," these three lay the blame on "bad men and women [who] took advantage of bad policies." They clearly attribute such frauds to deregulation, an ideological tenet of the Reagan-Bush era. (Nov.)
Lopate
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