This is the book that taught me never to loan a book to someone. I loaned my original copy to a friend in 1993 and never saw it again. I was ecstatic when I found that it was reprinted (my copy is definitely used, though that didn't come up in the description).
Since I was an employee relations consultant to the small S&Ls in California in the 1980s, I really can't comment on the book except that it is accurate, well written, engrossing, and tells stories of a relatively small band of chief executives of S&Ls who basically took down an industry once the government woke up. This is a fascinating story, well told, and even I learned things that were going on behind the scenes that, had I not known every character in the book, wouldn't have believed. I can't comment about the shenanigans he describes because I was in employee relations, not government oversight or fiduciary responsibilities of these CEOs. I knew mostly the honest CEOs and officers of the more than 100 small S&Ls in the state and along with me, they suffered the consequences of the 1985-87 investigation into the industry by the Fed.
That said, I would like to add that when the federal government allowed S&Ls to have checking accounts and ATM's, thereby making them just like banks, the government allowed banks to sell everything from life insurance (annuities) to stocks. What the government did was to give the right to sell services about which the officers and sometimes even the regulators knew very little about. In my group of S&Ls, monthly meetings were held to answer questions about these new activities (i.e., checking, ATMs, credit cards - all new to S&Ls and only 20 years old to banks except or checking accounts). The Keatings didn't come to such meetings, nor did some politicians who should have. The Keatings were out building empires and screwing the public. THAT's what this book is about, and it still fascinates even though I knew some of this stuff and most of the people. I'm astounded by how little I knew. Still, I had suspicions when one CEO would come back from trips to Italy with $30,000 hand blown glass logos of his institution that looked like they were purchased at a state fair. He also had a desk built for the cost of $25,000 that had the phone system and a new computer (in 1986!) neither of which he could operate or ever learned how to.
Perhaps in this era of BILLIONs you're all too jaded to see how these things played out 25 years ago, but these were real people who do now seem like caricatures. I can give you some anacdotes, but the whole story is in "Inside Job."
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