Saturday, October 04, 2008

Today's economic crisis is dejavu from the ' 80's


Other People's Money
By Paul Zane Pilzer

In their hard-hitting, credible expose of the government and private mismanagement and fraud that ushered in the national S&L disaster in the mid-'80s, real estate developer and New York University School of Business professor Pilzer and Deitz, business editor of the Dallas Times Herald , address the damage this calamity has done to the trust Americans place in financial institutions and the merit of saving money. First offering a concise history of the savings industry in the U.S., the authors go on to deplore its deregulation in the 1970s and '80s, arguing that this led to a virtually unlimited flow of brokered funds and risky investments by incompetents and crooks.
Accusing the Federal Home Loan Bank Board of an extensive cover-up of such shenanigans, Pilzer and Deitz sensibly call for reform of the savings deposit system, repayment of stolen savings to investors and incentives to restore our confidence in the virtue of thrift. From Publishers Weekly Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About Paul Zane Pilzer:
Paul Zane Pilzer is a world-renowned economist, a multimillionaire software entrepreneur, an adjunct professor, and the author of eight best-selling books and dozens of scholarly publications.
Pilzer completed Lehigh University in three years and received his MBA from Wharton in 15 months at age 22. He became Citibank's youngest officer at age 22 and its youngest vice president at age 25. At age 24, he was appointed adjunct professor at New York University, where he taught for 21 consecutive years.
He was an appointed economic adviser in two presidential administrations, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and warned of the impending $200 billion savings and loan crisis years before official Washington was willing to listen—a story that he later shared in Other People's Money (Simon & Schuster) which was critically acclaimed by The New York Times and The Economist magazine.

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