Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Follow the author
OK
The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry Paperback – September 15, 2013
Purchase options and add-ons
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.
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherUniversity of Texas Press
- Publication dateSeptember 15, 2013
- Dimensions6 x 1 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100292754183
- ISBN-13978-0292754188
Frequently bought together

Customers who bought this item also bought


Security Analysis, Seventh Edition: Principles and TechniquesBenjamin GrahamHardcover$19.03 shipping
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
William K. Black is Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, where he teaches White-Collar Crime, Public Finance, Antitrust, Law & Economics. He covers markets and regulation with his speech "Unsound Theories and Policies Produce Epidemics of Fraud and Regulatory and Market Failures."
Product details
- Publisher : University of Texas Press; 2nd edition (September 15, 2013)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0292754183
- ISBN-13 : 978-0292754188
- Item Weight : 1.13 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #740,502 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #495 in Banks & Banking (Books)
- #1,509 in Economic History (Books)
- #3,171 in Finance (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
How glad I now am to have read The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One.
The book does show step by step how the fraud in the S&Ls was perpetuated. Mr. Black, who was part of the agency that was supposed to regulate the S&L industry, gives the insider's perspective of what happened.
He's also interested in detailing the factors in the environment that made it possible for the fraud to occur, be covered up, and finally collapse. Factors ideological (regulation is not needed), budgetary (under-staffed, inexperienced regulators), and political (the power of bought politicians).
This makes what happened in the 1980's feel contemporary. There were patterns then that seem familiar to what is happening these days. (I am writing in April 2009.)
For example, Mr. Black shows how the S&L fraud was abetted by compliant accountants. Nowadays we've learned how compliant accounting firms falsely rated financial securities to the benefit of the bankers. And just recently political pressure was successfully brought to bear on the FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) to loosen up the Mark-to-Market accounting rules. To what end we will have to wait and see; after reading Best Way to Rob I am not sanguine.
I can't avoid the conclusion that the environment that resulted in corruption 20 years ago is still with us. And I begin to think that Obama's economic advisors will not change things.
So, this book is sobering. Parts of the story left me open-mouthed. Like the fact that Charles Keating continued to operate, and loot, for 2 years after his illegal practices were uncovered. In fact, he got the agency that was supposed to regulate S&L's to agree to a cease and desist order against itself: the agency agreed it would not take any action against Keating !!!
The author writes in a concise, clear way. And although you know the final outcome, he makes it a page-turner along the way. I kept reading and reading to follow what happens next.
One of the lessons Mr. Black would like to get across is that FRAUD HAPPENS. Don't be fooled by back-slapping, look-you-in-the-eye charismatic fellows. Fraud is not accidental. It will arise when conditions make for opportunities.
He's convinced me.
Then he explains how we have learned little and done nothing to protect ourselves against more frauds after that crisis was somewhat resolved. Instead, we encouraged more criminality by leaving most of the loopholes in place, deregulating still further in the name of blind ideologies, and refusing to seek out and punish the individuals responsible. Which brings us to the present ongoing rolling disaster. The criminals are still in charge, but now they are applauded and supported at the highest levels, there have been few prosecutions, and the vast scale of the looting has hollowed out our economy. The pathetic fines levied by the 'regulators' are just now a cost of doing business, just another expense to write off against taxes. No individuals are held to account, and the corporations they work for have now become 'people', with the added benefit of being immortal sociopaths.
This book is well worth reading if you are interested in understanding how we came to our present situation. Bill Black and his team brought the S & L crisis under control, and the same methods could bring the present crisis under control---if there was the political will. Well written by the leading insider.
My big takeaway is that once you have set the game rules and picked the refs, don't let the worst players replace the refs when a new league ownership comes to town. My other takeaway is when criminals and facilitators are caught, then prosecute and put them behind bars, which did in fact happen after the S&L crises. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the 2007-9 mortgage fiasco. These people are still in the financial services industry and learned the exact opposite lessons.
I fear that after 8 years of Fed inflating asset bubbles, we are ostensibly going to embark on a wave of financial deregulation under the Trump administration (read ineffective regulation). It cannot end well, especially with the 2007-9 criminals still at large. There may be quite a few parallels to draw -- and only time will tell. I hope that I'm wrong.
Top reviews from other countries
The book introduces and explains the widespread use of Control Frauds in which people such as Charles Keating, Don Dixon, Ranbir, Sahani and others uses the entity he or she controls as a weapon to commit fraud and as a shield to defend against detection and prosecution.
He was Litigation Director for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, and subsequent similar regulatory executive positions and was much involved in the regulation of the 'Reagan' era deregulated S and L business and tells of the efforts made by his original boss Ed Gray and his team to limit the horrendous cost to the US taxpayers of the corruption and fraud that was being perpetrated within the 'Control Frauds'. The irony being that these efforts to minimise the loss ot the Taxpayers was not only opposed and frustrated by politicians, the Washington bureaucratic machine and trade associations, but by some of some of Black's colleagues such as Gray's successor the ineffective Washington pen-pusher Danny Wall, and strangely enough qualified and experienced attorney, Rosemary Stewart, Head of Enforcement. Despite a huge mass of factual evidence provided to her of widespread fraud within companies such as Charles Keating's Lincoln Savings she resolutely continued her defence of the arch control fraudsters she persisted in obstructing Black and others efforts to close them down and curb the flow of losses. The irresponsible failure of the likes of Wall and Stewart cost the taxpayer many, many $billions of unnecessary losses. One is incredulous as to why they chose this course of non-action in the face of the overwhelming facts....unfortunately Black does not seem to know the reason either. It leads one to suspect all sorts of theories.
The book also highlights the loss of collective responsibility in the great law firms, accounting firms, investment banks and professional appraisers, that permitted some of their partners to conspire with criminals to allow and condone the conspiracy to defraud on such a massive scale.
Black deals with the subjects of Control Frauds in great depth giving his explanations on the reasons on why it tends to occur in waves that make financial markets deeply inefficient, and how to prevent such waves, and throughout stresses often the larger point that control fraud is a major, ongoing threat in business that requires active, independent regulations and effective regulators to contain it.
A superbly informative, interesting and still pertinent book that, alas, does little to suggest that this could not happen again. Why look at the 2008 Credit Crunch!



