Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward

The reality of government disruption of the free market cannot be overemphasized, for it is at the heart of our present and future crisis. We have savings institutions that are controlled by government at every step of the way. Federal agencies provide protection against losses and lay down rigid guidelines for capitalization levels, number of branches, territories covered, management policies, services rendered, and interest rates charged. The additional cost to S&Ls of compliance with this regulation has been estimated by the American Bankers Association at about $11 billion per year, which represents a whopping 60% of all their profits.

On top of that, the healthy component of the industry must spend over a billion dollars each year for extra premiums into the so-called insurance fund to make up for the failures of the unhealthy component, a form of penalty for success. When some of the healthy institutions attempted to convert to banks to escape this Penalty, the regulators said no. Their cash flow was needed to support the bailout fund.

INSURANCE FOR THE COMMON MAN?

The average private savings deposit is about $6,000. Yet, under the Carter administration, the level of FDIC insurance was raised 70 THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND

from $40,000 to $100,000 for each account. Those with more than that merely had to open several accounts, so, in reality, the sky was the limit. Clearly this had nothing to do with protecting the common man. The purpose was to prepare the way for brokerage houses to reinvest huge blocks of capital at high rates of interest virtually without risk. It was, after all, insured by the federal government.

In 1979, Federal Reserve policy had pushed up interest rates, and the S&Ls had to keep pace to attract deposits. By December of 1980, they were paying 15.8% interest on their money-market certificates. Yet, the average rate they were charging for new mortgages was only 12.9%. Many of their older loans were still crunching away at 7 or 8% and, to compound the problem, some of those were in default, which means they were really paying 0%.

The thrifts were operating deep in the red and had to make up the difference somewhere.

The weakest S&Ls paid the highest interest rates to attract depositors and they are the ones which obtained the large blocks of brokered funds. Brokers no longer cared how weak the operation was, because the funds were fully insured. They just cared about the interest rate.

On the other hand, the S&L managers reasoned that they had to make those funds work miracles for the short period they had them. It was their only chance to dig out, and they were willing to take big risks. For them also, the government's insurance program had removed any chance of loss to their depositors, so many of them plunged into high-profit, high-risk real-estate developments.

Deals began to go sour, and 1979 was the first year since the Great Depression of the 1930s that the total net worth of federally insured S&Ls became negative. And that was despite expansion almost everywhere else in the economy. The public began to worry.

FULL FAITH AND CREDIT

The protectors in Washington responded in 1982 with a joint resolution of Congress declaring that the full faith & credit of the United States government stood behind the FSLIC. That was a reassuring phrase, but many people had the gnawing feeling that, somehow, we were going to pay for it ourselves. And they were right. Consumer Reports explained:

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Behind the troubled banks and the increasingly troubled insurance agencies stands "the full faith and credit" of the Government—in effect, a promise, sure to be honored by Congress, that all citizens will chip in through taxes or through inflation to make ail depositors whole.

The plight of the S&Ls was dramatically brought to light in Ohio in 1985 when the Home State Savings Bank of Cincinnati collapsed as a result of a potential $150 million loss in a Horida securities firm. This triggered a run, not only on the thirty-three branches of Home State, but on many of the other S&Ls as well. The news impacted international markets where overseas speculators dumped paper dollars for other currencies, and some rushed to buy gold.

Within a few days, depositors demanding their money caused $60 million to flow out of the state's $130 million "insurance" fund which, true to form for all government protection schemes, was terribly inadequate. If the run had been allowed to continue, the fund likely would have been obliterated the next day. It was time for a political fix.