P.M. BRIEFING : Panelist Assails S&L; Efforts
- Share via
WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Senate Banking Committee today assailed the Bush Administration’s efforts to bolster the nation’s crumbling savings and loan industry and to detect the fraud that has siphoned thrift assets.
Sen. Donald W. Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.) said the Administration’s agencies “are not applying enough resources” to detect and prosecute fraud in the thrift industry.
Riegle’s remarks came as he released a status report on the Administration’s thrift rescue effort, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act launched nine months ago.
Since then, Riegle said, weak thrifts are getting weaker, stronger institutions are making modest improvements and mid-level thrifts that “can go either way” are struggling to strengthen themselves.
Cleaning up the nation’s beleaguered thrift industry is estimated to cost taxpayers between $325 billion and $500 billion, or about $3,000 per person.
More From the Los Angeles Times
Podcasts
The latest effort is coming from the L.A. County Board of Supervisors. They just announced a $3 million program in conjunction with some nonprofits groups to test and clean the soil at homes still standing in the areas impacted by the Eaton Fire.
California once bet big on offshore wind to help power its clean-energy future, but the Trump administration is now paying developers billions to walk away from their projects. As California’s remaining offshore-wind leases hang in the balance, the state is fighting back in court.
The Hillside Strangler murders terrorized Los Angeles in the late 1970s. The killers were a pair of sadistic cousins. One confessed. The other was set to stand trial—until L.A. prosecutors flinched.
