Charles Keating and the Lessons of the Savings and Loan Crisis
"After Reagan deregulated the savings and loans in the early 1980s, Charles Keating made millions of dollars through risky investments that ripped off the people who invested in two of the companies he ran, American Continental Corporation and Lincoln Savings and Loan.
Tens of thousands of everyday Americans, many of them senior citizens, lost millions of dollars on the junk bonds Keating sold to them.
Keating was protected from federal regulators for a while by a group of senators, including John McCain, but by 1989 the gig was up. American Continental went bankrupt and Lincoln Continental was seized by the government. This was the largest bank failure of the savings and loan (S&L) crisis of the 1980s and 1990s
Ethically and logistically, there's very little difference between what Keating did 25 years ago during the savings and loans debacle and what Wall Street banksters did in the lead-up to the 2008 financial meltdown."
