[Banks will do any insane thing at all, anywhere, anytime ... and usually someone else winds up taking the shellacking the bankers themselves deserve, e.g.:]
Chicago Sun-Times, July 15, 1996
Cost of S&L bailout continues to climb
BY ROB WELLS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
A new congressional study puts the price tag of the savings and loan debacle at $ 480.9 billion, much higher than previous estimates of the government bailout.
Friday's General Accounting Office study arrives at the new figure by calculating indirect costs, such as the interest on government spending for the thrift rescue in the 1980s and early 1990s.
"It was very difficult from the outset to determine the cost of the S&L bailout," said Dimitri Papadimitriou, executive director of the Jerome Levy Economics Institute. "I'm not surprised the numbers are as high as they are."
In the 1980s, hundreds of thrifts became insolvent and were taken over by the government because of a variety of factors: S&Ls' aggressive expansion into speculative real estate; a mismatch between high interest rates thrifts paid for deposits while earnings were low from long-term loans; and government policies that kept S&Ls open despite their low capital levels. ...
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Carl