cover image Other People's Money: The Inside Story of the Sandl Mess

Other People's Money: The Inside Story of the Sandl Mess

Robert Deitz, Paul Zane Pilzer. Simon & Schuster, $18.45 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-671-68101-2

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. (Nov.)