I'm going to take the liberty of reposting this since it's buried in a somewhat unrelated thread below, and reposting will give me the opportunity to correct an HTML flub.

Here I am responding to Larry J, who has posted that the blame for the S&L scandal cannot be assigned to just one side - the Republicans.

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It is somewhat funny that all of the abuse, the scams, the swindles, and the bail-out occurred under Republican administrations, but it was a Democratic president who got investigated for his alleged part in it, which amounted to a $60,000 loss.

Funny indeed, now that you mention it.

It was not simply the deregulation, but more significantly the financial scams of those who took advantage of it which account for the S&L scandal, and all of those capers occurred under Republican administrations.

It's true, as the FDIC timeline shows, there were some relatively moderate legislative changes to remove distinctions among the various lending organizations in the closing year of the Carter administration, but all of the corruption occured under Republican administrations, as did the bail-out, which cost U.S. taxpayers further.

If that weren't bad enough, who does the press roast about it? None other than William Jefferson and Hillary Clinton, who have managed to lose $60,000 while others make off with millions and get little ink.

Charles Keating and Lincoln S&L

Silverado S&L

Remember those?

And then there is Whitewater, "...a fourteen-year-old real estate transaction on which the Clintons lost $60,000 dollars." but which warranted 112 newspaper articles in 113 days in one newspaper according to this series of webpages on the S&L fiasco by Franklin R. Mancuso.

The point here is a significant one.

There was a witch hunt against the Clintons orchestrated by the media for their loss<i/> of chickenfeed, while at the same time the perpetrators of a gigantic financial swindle of the American public were given kid-glove treatment, or no coverage at all, by these same trusted organs of public information.



All of the abuse, the scams, the swindles, the bail-outs occurred under Republican adminstrations, and some of the biggest perpetrators had close ties to highly placed administration officials, but it was a Democratic president who came under the greatest scrutiny for a $60,000 loss.

Nevertheless, in the end, the Clintons were absolved of any wrongdoing in the Whitewater transactions, but by then Ken Starr had stumbled onto the Lewinski affair, and those out to get Clinton would have their day.

What emerges from all of this, for those who need it spelled out for them, is that our media is hardly liberal.

That same media persecuted a non-player in the nation's largest-ever financial swindle while the guilty parties absconded with billions.

sp