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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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120489
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12048900.035
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1990-09-19
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NATION, Page 46Keating Takes the FifthBut the last word is yet to be spoken about the thrift fiascoBy Margaret Carlson
Until last week financier Charles Keating had insisted on being
the final witness at congressional hearings on the $2.5 billion
disaster at Lincoln Savings & Loan, so that he could rebut the
witnesses who had accused him of staving off a federal crackdown
on his troubled thrift by lavishing money on influential
politicians. But as the aggressive ex-fighter pilot, Olympic
swimmer and pillar of the Phoenix business community was being
sworn in before the House Banking Committee, his right hand
trembled noticeably. His tanned face flushed, his 6-ft. 5-in. frame
slumped, Keating, 66, demanded that television cameras be turned
off. Then he spoke: "On the advice of counsel, I respectfully
exercise my constitutional prerogative and privilege . . . and
decline to answer questions here today."
At least five people were probably relieved that the normally
garrulous financier had kept his mouth shut: the Senators who
received a total of $1.3 million in contributions from Keating.
The last time he was asked whether the money he gave to
California's Alan Cranston, Michigan's Donald Riegle, Ohio's John
Glenn and Arizona's Dennis DeConcini and John McCain had persuaded
them to intervene with federal regulators on his behalf, Keating
baldly declared, "I certainly hope so." Iowa Republican Congressman
Jim Leach, one of the few members of the House Banking Committee
who does not accept contributions from political action committees,
says that if the allegations against him are true, Keating is "a
financiopath of obscene proportions -- the Rev. Jim Bakker of
American commerce."
The Government has filed a $1.1 billion fraud and racketeering
suit to try to recover some of the money that Keating and his
family are said to have taken out of Lincoln. Several class-action
suits charging that Keating siphoned off millions to sham
corporations in Switzerland, Panama and the Bahamas have been filed
on behalf of 23,000 mainly elderly California bondholders. During
the two years that Lincoln stayed open after the five Senators met
with San Francisco bank examiners who wanted to shut Lincoln in
April 1987, the cost of paying off the S & L's federally insured
depositors grew to more than $2 billion. Along the way, Keating
sought the help of an astonishing array of Government officials as
well as financial and accounting experts. To their current
embarrassment, some agreed:
Alan Greenspan. In 1985 Keating hired the current chairman of
the Federal Reserve Board, then a private economic consultant, to
convince the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) that Lincoln was
sound and should be exempt from a rule limiting direct investments
in risky enterprises to 10% of a bank's portfolio. Though Greenspan
wrote to the board on Lincoln's behalf in February 1985, the board
turned down the exemption request. But Government officials who let
Keating keep control of the S & L still brandish the Greenspan
study when they come under fire. If Keating could fool a man as
smart as Greenspan, the argument goes, no wonder he could take in
five Senators.
Jack Atchison. In 1986 and 1987 Atchison was a managing partner
of Arthur Young & Co., the accounting firm that audited Lincoln.
Under Atchison's direction, the thrift got a clean bill of health.
Later Atchison took a $930,000-a-year job as a vice president with
Lincoln's parent company, American Continental Corp. Like his boss,
Atchison took the Fifth before the committee several weeks ago.
Lee Henkel. Keating bragged that he had won a seat on the FHLBB
for his friend and business associate Henkel (Keating had lent more
than $60 million to businesses in which Henkel was part owner) by
lobbying former White House chief of staff Donald Regan. Henkel's
stint on the board lasted only five months. Although he was cleared
of any wrongdoing, he resigned after the Justice Department and the
FHLBB investigated his first official act: a motion that would have
specifically benefited Keating by exempting Lincoln from
direct-investment limits.
Lawrence Taggart. The top thrift regulator in California in
1983 and 1984, Taggart allowed Keating to transfer $800 million in
Lincoln's assets to high-risk investments. A month later he
resigned from the government to become head of a Keating-controlled
enterprise, TCS Financial Inc. Immediately Keating poured nearly
$3 million into the business, wiping out the debt of the
financially ailing firm. A friend of then FHLBB head Edwin Gray,
who became his bitter enemy, Taggart wrote to Don Regan in 1986,
calling Gray a "re-regulator" who was having a "very adverse impact
on the ability of our party to raise needed campaign funds."
Though Keating's refusal to testify brought last week's hearing
to an anticlimactic end, the scandal will soon be revived in other
forums. The Senate ethics committee has hired an outside
investigator to probe the Keating Five, and the FBI is now in on
the investigation. Years may pass before the books are finally
closed on this fiasco -- and decades before taxpayers are finished
paying the tab for it.