The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One by William K. Black

Author:William K. Black
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2005-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

Wright’s hopes for good publicity over his purported decision to support the $15 billion recap turned sour.

THE MAY MASSACRE

We could compete with the league’s professional lobbyists when the setting was the House Banking Committee. The members knew something about S&L issues; their staffs were often knowledgeable; and the number of members was large but not enormous. We could not possibly, however, compete with the league’s grassroots lobbyists, i.e., the local S&L executives who were on a first name basis with the senator or representative, contributed to their campaigns, and ran their election committees. More particularly, we could not compete with 500 such grassroots lobbyists descending en masse on the Capitol and fanning out to meet every member of Congress in two days.

The league now called hundreds of S&L executives to Congress to lobby personally virtually every member of the House. As Mr. O’Connell testified in 1993 before the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement:

I was the guy who organized the grass roots political organization for the savings and loan business. I think I did a good job, and I think it was successful when we had to go to the Hill. We spent a fair amount of money from the trade association….

I tried to have political contact people from the business in each congressional district. [W]hen I wanted to get three, four, five hundred people in there, I got three, four, five hundred people there [on the Hill] and usually had all the congressional districts covered. (NCFIRRE 1993b, 181)

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