Thrifts Deregulation an Error, Head of S&L; Trade Group Says

The new chairman of the savings and loan industry’s largest trade group said today that it is time for the government to admit deregulating the thrifts was wrong and that he will vigorously pursue tighter regulations when Congress begins considering how to restructure the business.

But B. R. Beeksma, taking over the top elected post at the U.S. League of Savings Institutions, also vowed to fight efforts to restructure the business out of existence.

“There are those waiting with knives in their hands to carve up . . . our industry in distinct and separate regulatory structures,” Beeksma, chairman of InterWest Savings Bank in Oak Harbor, Wash., told about 2,300 delegates at the league’s convention.

He complained that healthy S&Ls; have taken a “bum rap” for “a relative handful of our institutions” that invested in exotic and risky ventures such as windmill farms and racehorses.

Beeksma said it was time for Congress and the executive branch to “fess up to the fact that they were wrong--that they made grievous errors . . . when they deregulated our business.”

Regulators currently estimate the red ink of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp. at $45 billion to $50 billion. Beeksma said healthy S&Ls; can’t bear the cost without falling into insolvency themselves.

But, as part of what he called “our never-again agenda,” he said S&Ls; would accept a clampdown on the kinds of lax oversight that contributed to the red ink.

“I can promise you that the U.S. League will be vigorous in its pursuit of tighter regulation and supervision,” Beeksma said.