The Fiasco of Deregulation

During the Presidential Campaign, there was a great deal of information available regarding the Keating Scandal, a costly bailout that was preventable and involved Senator McCain. The connection with that failure to regulate with current bank failures was highlighted by the Washington Post.

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The Washington Post reported last month that OTS allowed thrifts to lend massively while reserves against future losses dwindled. Even as problems became apparent, the agency continued to prioritize deregulation. The latest findings underscore that OTS failed to enforce its own rules.
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The regulator named in Thorson's letter, Darrel Dochow, was removed from his position yesterday as director of OTS's west division, which supervised Washington Mutual, Countrywide, IndyMac and Downey Savings and Loan, among other banks that have been seized or sold this year.
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It is the second time Dochow has been removed from a position as a senior thrift regulator. He was demoted in the early 1990s after federal investigators found that he had delayed and impeded proper regulation of Charles Keating's failed Lincoln Savings and Loan. .

Securities experts said the filing could raise legal issues because it is a crime to knowingly make false statements in the financial records of a public company.
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The new numbers also averted an intervention by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which could have acted to limit the eventual cost of IndyMac's failure. The FDIC now estimates the cost at about $8.9 billion. The agency is funded by the banking industry.
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Dochow's efforts to help IndyMac extended beyond his support for the bank's revised financial filings.
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At another point last spring, Dochow limited the scope of a review by OTS regulators of IndyMac's portfolio of loans and other assets, overruling the advice of others in the agency, according to a source with knowledge of the incident.
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The current episode echoes Dochow's involvement in the collapse of Lincoln Savings and Loan.
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In September 1987 Dochow halted an examination of Lincoln, which was meant to determine whether the bank had an adequate capital cushion, at the request of his then-boss, Federal Home Loan Bank Board Chairman M. Danny Wall, according to a congressional investigation. Attorneys for Lincoln and its chief executive, Keating, had threatened to sue the bank board, OTS's predecessor, if the exam went ahead.
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When the exam finally happened eight months later, it revealed that Lincoln was engaged in unsafe, unsound lending practices, booking inappropriate income and inappropriately sending money to its holding company. The company was placed in conservatorship soon thereafter and taxpayers eventually spent $2.7 billion bailing it out. Dochow was demoted and sent to a regional job.
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