Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans [Hardcover]

Stephen Pizzo (Author), Mary Fricker (Author), Paul Muolo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1989

As a gripping warning about the dangers of the deregulation of American banks, this book tells the story of the collapse of the nation's thrifts. As millions of Americans deposited life-savings, scores of executives risked the money in ventures that failed, causing the American taxpayers to suffer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bound to be controversial, this impressive expose by three journalists charges that the S & L industry was taken over by a national network of Mafiosi, corrupt thrift officers, appraisers, auditors and arms- and drug-dealers laundering money, all of whom exploited opportunities provided by the 1982 deregulation. Fortified with unlimited broker deposits, the network plundered hundreds of federally insured thrifts. The authors discount the role of high oil prices, the Sunbelt recession and other factors as catalysts in the S & L disaster. Excepting Federal Home Loan Bank Board chairman Erwin Gray, who fought to limit deposit brokerage, Pizzo, Fricker and Muolo accuse the Justice Department, the courts and other federal and state agencies for ignoring or covering up four years of fraud. They also maintain that the guilty have not been punished and little of the loot has been recovered out of official fear of revelation.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Three investigative reporters trace what has happened to the savings-and-loan industry since President Reagan signed into law the Garn-St. Germain bill which deregulated the way thrift institutions can invest money in order to better compete with financial firms that offered more attractive alternatives to savings-and-loan depositors. Some of the results involved shoddy investments that ruined banks and put the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation in deep financial trouble. The authors chronicle some of the more serious cases that involved illegal schemes, organized crime, greedy bank officials, and scandal. Like a good mystery, this is hard to put down, and if the reader has trouble with the jargon, there is a good glossary. A very timely and popular item.
- Steven J. Mayover, Free Lib . of Philadelphia
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 443 pages
• Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill; First Edition first Printing edition (September 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0070502307
• ISBN-13: 978-0070502307
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,015,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I never knew this happened (it should never have happened), May 24, 2006

By 

Russell E. Ruszkowski "rusrus" (Lakewood, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans (Paperback)

I highly recommend this to those of us who were not adults at the time: in the 80's, I was still a kid - I couldn't be bothered to know what was happening in the world of S&Ls. Little did I know, but those high-flyers would affect my taxes for years (and years and years).

The book is easy to read - not too technical. It was a bit repetitive at times, but I think that's because many of the S&L crooks used the same types of illegal ponzi schemes to move money from one pocket to the other.

If you're like me, and knew very little about the S&L debacle, then let this book educate you. It's a telling tale of the problems brought-about by rampant de-regulation. I never knew that the S&L scandal(s) involved the wholesale looting of these banks (and American taxpayers - since they were federally protected deposits).

If you're already well-versed in the subject, you can read this to get some of the more personal stories of theft and graft.

There were also stories of corrupt politicians. I know it's a shock, but to me there's nothing more disgusting than a public trustee bending the rules to their advantage: they work for us.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very well done - but perhaps too much for the casual reader, September 22, 2007

By 

Mad Max (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans (Paperback)

I give this 4.5 stars out of 5 - very well done. The most accessible, well-documented history of the S&L crisis caused by Reagan in the 80's. Even though the topic is dated, the book provides a good subject for students of history, and also an eye-opener for people interested in the irresponsible (and costly) fiscal policies of the neo-con right wing.

In the first few pages, this book summarizes a problem (a scam, actually) perpetuated on the American taxpayers by a small handful of ultra-wealthy elitists. In just a few minutes, you will have a firm grasp on how the scam works, and the long term effects on the US economy - something even the press never really understood and failed to adequately convey to the public. The author uses metaphors and plain language, and even though it is dense, the book is easy to read.

Besides being a good overview, what I found most interesting was the secion on Neil Bush and his insurance fraud scams (over 100 of them), and how George H Bush was able to pardon him before the public or press got full wind of his embezzlement. Subsequently, I read the book "Silverado: Neil Bush and the Savings & Loan Scandal" - which was also very good, but franky, I thought that the short section on Bush in the Inside Job did more than an adequate job of covering all the facts.

Except for the historian, economist, or political scientist, this book is probably too much detail for the average reader. For those of you who want the quick & dirty fact, I suggest reading about it online (Wikipedia), or getting the the abridged version of this book, or listening to the abridged audio book. But the length of the book does not detract from my positive rating - very well done.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Investigative Reporting but DON'T buy the Kindle version, October 19, 2010

By 

Harry Siegel (Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans (Paperback)

Overall this is one of the best books I have read. The level of reporting, the details, the work involved in tracking down sources and detailed information (during an era without high speed internet and without significant computing power) is mind boggling. I won't elaborate further since other reviewers have covered that ground.

Let me now turn my attention to the Kindle version (I read the paperback version and later bought the Kindle version to have as a handy reference). The Kindle version is woefully deficient. It is one of the the worst examples of Amazon's lack of enforcement of a standard for converting text (especially older books) to their electronic Kindle format!!

> There is NO table of content in the Kindle version, not even an unlinked one.

> The very useful Dramatis Personae is omitted from the Kindle version!

> The Glossary is omitted from the Kindle Version!

> A section on "Source Notes" which includes sections: "Suggested Readings" and "Media Overviews" is omitted from the Kindle Version.

> There is NO Index...at all. This not entirely trivial since it would at least provide an organized overview of important data. However, even if the Kindle version did have a table of contents, it, as in all Kindle books, would presumably be non-functional. Since the Kindle does not use page numbers, an index is usually presented as a poor quality, non-linked image, not as searchable text document. And, of course, there is no way in the Kindle (that I am aware of) to perform Boolean searches to compensate for this missing feature(a linked index).

> Inside Job is one of the best examples of investigative reporting I have ever read. The author's of this book have numerous and elaborate footnotes in the paperback version but the footnote references are not "linked" in the Kindle version. The lack of linking the footnotes from their reference in the body of the text makes it EXTREMELY difficult to read the footnotes(and this work has numerous footnotes). In fact it is so cumbersome to find and read the footnotes it renders them effectively useless.

In short, the publisher took shortcuts in creating the Kindle e-book version that detract substantially from an otherwise excellent book. (As a note: I also fault Amazon for not imposing a rigorous standard for books that are converted to the Kindle e-book format. If nothing else Amazon should at least provide a table on every Kindle book's Amazon purchase page plainly displaying which Kindle features are enabled (eg, TOC linked?, Index present?, Footnotes Linked? Definitions working?, Search function fully enabled? etc.) That's the least they could do.