The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One

Description
"This is an extraordinary book... No other account gives a complete picture of the control fraud that occurred in the S&L crisis... There is no one else in the whole world who understands so well exactly how these lootings occurred in all their details and how the changes in government regulations and in statutes in the early 1980s caused this spate of looting... This book will be a classic." --George A. Akerlof, University of California, Berkeley, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for Economics

Persons interested in the economics of fraud, the S&L debacle, the problems of financial regulation, and microeconomics more broadly will find this book to be very important. It is a marvelous combination of insider experiences, well-grounded generalizations, and the foundations of a broader research agenda. It merits a wide readership and, one hopes, sustained reflection on its arguments and conclusions. (Robert E. Prasch Journal of Economic Issues 200609)

From an Amazon Reviewer
The inside story, May 26, 2005 By Bartly Dzivi

This review is from: The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry

Take it from someone who was toiling down in the trenches chasing the bad guys, this book is a first hand account of how the Reagan administration and Speaker Wright fiddled while the savings and loan crisis burned. It explains how, and why, the government for years did not try to stop the corporate criminals who went on one of the largest financial crime sprees in the history of the United States. This is an important work, not only for its historic value in explaining this particular outbreak of white collar crime in the savings and loan industry, but also because it carefully lays out the patterns of control fraud that will continue to recur in different corporate venues as long as people are willing to steal and lie to try and gain an economic advantage. This should be required reading for every financial regulator in the United States. Alan Greenspan, who recently argued that personal reputation in business practices should be more important than enforcing rules, should read it twice (or as many times as it takes until Mr. Greenspan can remember why he trusted Charles Keating).