More Bailout Funds for S
I want to commend you for your editorial commenting on the cruel irony of the savings and loan story--that the rip-off of the assets of these lending institutions happened under the guise that by reducing governmental controls there would result “unqualified benefits.” But your explanations contain some of the grandest understatements of this century.
In fact, our current scandal (and national shame) makes the manipulators of yore going back to Teapot Dome and forward to the stock manipulators of more recent times look like rank amateurs. Please remember that what we’re talking about here is $300 billion just for starters! That’s a three with more zeros than I know how to count, and the debt will be saddled on us and on future generations well into the 21st Century! The implications are mind-boggling.
If you really thought for a minute that deregulations and the lifting of other vital controls on industry and commerce would, somehow, squash the baser instincts--greed, avarice, and selfishness at all cost inherent in too many captains of industry--then you are being dangerously naive.
What absolutely galls and infuriates me to no end is the speed with which the Bush Administration, Congress (chief federal thrift regulator) M. Danny Wall and all the rest of the government bureaucracy, which is supposed to oversee such matters in the public interest and welfare, are all too ready to dump the IOU on us, and then they drag their collective feet in bringing the responsible scoundrels to justice!
I know that many of our politicians went to bed with these crooks, so now I’m the one who is being naive in having some glimmer of hope that justice will be served. And the Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan, that swift and righteous champion of unfettered business enterprise, should take the lion’s share of the blame for this mess. The least he can do is contribute part of the millions he makes from his speeches in Japan and elsewhere. But the day this happens you’ll see me fly out of the state for surely a flood or the Big Quake will hit us.
GUSTAVO J. RAMOS
Los Angeles
