PERSPECTIVE ON BANKING : Dark Clouds and a Deep Sleep : We’re paying dearly for ignoring the S&L; mess. Now there are attempts to squelch open talk in Congress on bank woes.

When the familiar visages of Charles H. Keating Jr., Donald R. Dixon and the other savings-and-loan highfliers fade from front pages and evening newscasts, will the regulators, Congress, the public and the media fall once again into a deep sleep?

My concern in particular is that there is a concerted effort to squelch further public discussion in Congress of the S&L; situation and of the stability of the commercial banking industry.

By next fall, American taxpayers will have shelled out between $120 billion and $130 billion to clean up the savings-and-loan mess. On top of that, mounting interest costs will almost certainly send the final total well over half a trillion dollars. Then there are the hidden costs: higher prices for loans, lower interest on savings and a multitude of new fees for basic banking services.

Any way the calculations are put together, the American consumer is paying dearly for inept regulation, an apathetic media, a Congress that always seemed to be looking the other way and a Reagan Administration that believed that deregulation was a holy mission to be carried out regardless of the casualties or costs. In this atmosphere, the only surprise is that more crooks and fly-by-night operators didn’t raid the unguarded vaults of federal deposit insurance.

Normally, a disaster of this magnitude would put the nation on a permanent red alert. Unfortunately, there are signs that everyone will nod off again and leave the future of our financial system to the insiders. Special interests are already pitching their tents along the Potomac, convinced they can convert next year’s reform of the deposit-insurance system into a vehicle for the commercial banking industry’s wish list. Hoping no one draws unkind parallels with the savings and loans, bank lobbyists will be lined up 10 deep at cocktail parties for the new Congress, begging that their clients be given the right to gamble with taxpayers’ funds on a new round of risky activities.

For a fleeting moment, as the S&L; cleanup legislation moved through Congress, there were promises that, at long last, sunshine would penetrate the dark corners of the regulatory agencies and, particularly, the mammoth bureaucracy being set up to handle the bailout.

But the “never again” slogans are fading and regulatory windows are once more being shuttered. With dark clouds hanging over the banking industry, the House Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee last August asked the controller of the currency and the Federal Reserve Board to provide details on growing problems in commercial real-estate lending and regulatory action to protect insurance funds. Those two agencies replied with dire warnings that public information could be damaging to the banking industry’s health--if not to the regulators themselves.

Not to be outdone by this “nobody needs to know” nonsense, a small army of regulators, Justice Department attorneys and assorted bureaucrats from the State Department descended on the committee to stop an investigation of the Atlanta branch of the Italian Banca Nazionale del Lavoro.

Virtually unregulated by the Federal Reserve and the state of Georgia, the Atlanta bank was under suspicion as the source of questionable loans to Iraq, including credits guaranteed by the Commodity Credit Corp. and the Export-Import Bank. The fact that the U.S. government and its taxpayers stood to lose hundreds of millions of dollars on the guarantees seemed less interesting to the regulators than the concerted effort to keep the facts from the committee and the public--and embarrassment away from the Administration.

But the 1990 chutzpah award has to go to Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady, who last week adamantly stood by his position that a request for $57 billion of new S&L; bailout money was not sufficient to require testimony from Treasury in an open session of the committee. Brady’s non-appearance may signal the beginning of a new era of darkness in the Administration, limiting its public discussion of S&L; problems and going underground with as many facts as possible. The Administration should realize this route has been tried before--with disastrous results.

The S&L; crisis was nurtured in the dark basements of official government secrecy. Today there is growing concern about the condition of the commercial banking industry--the Bank Insurance Fund, according to the General Accounting Office, is in the greatest danger since it was established in the aftermath of the Great Depression.

I hope we have learned something from the savings-and-loan debacle--at least enough to make certain that facts are not hidden until disaster strikes.

Reform of the deposit-insurance system must top next year’s legislative agenda. The reform must ensure stable funds with adequate reserves, but it must also ensure that the risks taken by insured institutions are limited and that the first burden of risk is borne by the owners of these institutions--not by the taxpayers. It must also be accompanied by a streamlined, coordinated regulatory system that understands its constituency is the public, not the industry.