The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One : : How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry / / William K. Black.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Texas Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Black, William K.,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2021]; ©2013
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Edition: Updated Edition
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

In this expert insider’s account of the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s, William Black lays bare the strategies that corrupt CEOs and CFOs—in collusion with those who have regulatory oversight of their industries—use to defraud companies for their personal gain. Recounting the investigations he conducted as Director of Litigation for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, Black fully reveals how Charles Keating and hundreds of other S&L owners took advantage of a weak regulatory environment to perpetrate accounting fraud on a massive scale. In the new afterword, he also authoritatively links the S&L crash to the business failures of 2008 and beyond, showing how CEOs then and now are using the same tactics to defeat regulatory restraints and commit the same types of destructive fraud. Black uses the latest advances in criminology and economics to develop a theory of why “control fraud”—looting a company for personal profit—tends to occur in waves that make financial markets deeply inefficient. He also explains how to prevent such waves. Throughout the book, Black drives home the larger point that control fraud is a major, ongoing threat in business that requires active, independent regulators to contain it. His book is a wake-up call for everyone who believes that market forces alone will keep companies and their owners honest.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter 1 Theft by Deception: Control Fraud in the S&L Industry -- Chapter 2 “Competition in Laxity” -- Chapter 3 The Most Unlikely of Heroes -- Chapter 4 Keating’s Unholy War against the Bank Board -- Chapter 5 The Texas Control Frauds Enlist Jim Wright -- Chapter 6 “The Faustian Bargain” -- Chapter 7 The Miracles, the Massacre, and the Speaker’s Fall -- Chapter 8 M. Danny Wall: “Child of the Senate” -- Chapter 9 Final Surrender: Wall Takes Up Neville Chamberlain’s Umbrella -- Chapter 10 It’s the Things You Do Know, But Aren’t So, That Cause Disasters -- Afterword -- Appendix A. Keating’s Plan of Attack on Gray and Reregulation -- Appendix B. Hamstringing the Regulator -- Appendix C. Get Black . . . Kill Him Dead -- Notes -- Names and Terms -- References -- Index