The whole meltdown, in my opinion, was nothing more than a redistribution of wealth and Bush's last hurrah. I never understood how no one in the media made the connection between the current meltdown or crisis and the Savings and Loan Crisis of the 80's. Anyone that looks at the S&L crisis will notice that the Bush family played prominent roles in that crisis and to me it looks like the S&L crisis of the 80's was just a test run for our current economic meltdown.

From Wikipedia:

The savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s (commonly referred to as the S&L crisis) was the failure of 747 savings and loan associations (S&Ls aka thrifts). A Savings and Loan is a financial institution in the United States that accepts savings deposits and makes mortgage, car and other personal loans to individual members - a cooperative venture known in the United Kingdom as a Building Society. The ultimate cost of the crisis is estimated to have totaled around $160.1 billion, about $124.6 billion of which was directly paid for by the US government via a financial bailout under the leadership of George H.W. Bush—that is, the US taxpayer provided the funding for the bailout, either directly or through charges on their savings and loan accounts and increased taxes[1]—which contributed to the large budget deficits of the early 1990s.

From Campaignwatch,org:

The Bush family’s dealings illustrate some of the ways this S&L loot was extracted. In some loan transactions, money was simply siphoned out fraudulently to outsiders under lucrative arrangements with bank directors; Neil Bush’s record illustrates these type of transactions. In other instances, as exemplified by Jeb’s S&L dealings, loans were made for speculative investments or ventures without attempts to secure repayment if they were not profitable. Political connections often helped protect S&L misconduct;9 in the Bush’s case, George senior’s record demonstrated laxity toward the perpetrators, several of whom were in his own social circles.

NEIL BUSH. In 1990, federal regulators filed a $200-million lawsuit against Neil Bush and other officers of the Silverado Banking, accusing them of “gross negligence” contributing to its $1 billion collapse.1 “Our conclusion is that Silverado was the victim of sophisticated schemes and abuses by insiders and of gross negligence by its directors and outside professionals,” FDIC Senior Deputy General Counsel Douglas H. Jones said in a statement.2

Bush was reprimanded by the Office of Thrift Supervision for “multiple conflicts of interest” as a paid director of the S&L, including his approval of $132 million in loans from Silverado to two business partners, Bill Walters and Kenneth Good.3 Bush, in turn, had received $550,000 in salaries from a company funded by Walters and Good plus a $100,000 loan from Good that was subsequently forgiven.4 Walters and Good looted an estimated $330 million from Silverado; one Silverado director had shared instructions on how to establish family trusts to protect such secreted funds from repossession by the government.5

A top federal regulator testified to Congress that Washington officials postponed Silverado’s shutdown from October to December 1988, after George Bush’s presidential campaign was successfully culminated.6 The director of the Office of Thrift Supervision asked the Treasury Department to investigate whether political considerations caused the delay, but no such probe was conducted.7 Neil got off paying only $50,000 in a settlement of the $200 million federal suit against him other Silverado directors.8 He didn’t have to worry about his $250,000 legal bill, as Thomas Ashley, a friend of George Bush senior and the head of a banking association that was lobbying the federal government for bank deregulation, formed a legal defense fund to pay the bills.

JEB BUSH. In 1987, Miguel Recarey, a longstanding business associate of Tampa Mafia boss Santos Trafficante, fled the U.S. under three indictments for labor racketeering, illegal wiretapping, and Medicare fraud.1 His firm, International Medical Centers (IMC), which was America’s largest health maintenance organization for the elderly and which had received $1 billion in Medicare funds, collapsed.2 Recarey’s HMO left $222 million in unpaid bills,3 and was suspected of up to $100 million in Medicare fraud.4 “IMC is the classic case of embezzlement of government funds,” said William Teich, who headed the U.S. Office of Labor Racketeering in Miami. Teich called it a “bust-out operation” where money was “drained out the back door” and disappeared down “a black hole. (read more here: http://www.campaignwatch.org/more1.htm )

From http://rationalrevolution.net/war/bush_family_and_the_s.htm

There are several ways in which the Bush family plays into the Savings and Loan scandal, which involves not only many members of the Bush family but also many other politicians that are still in office and still part of the Bush Jr. administration today. Jeb Bush, George Bush Sr., and his son Neil Bush have all been implicated in the Savings and Loan Scandal, which cost American tax payers over $1.4 TRILLION dollars (note that this is about one quarter of our national debt).

Between 1981 and 1989, when George Bush finally announced that there was a Savings and Loan Crisis to the world, the Reagan/Bush administration worked to cover up Savings and Loan problems by reducing the number and depth of examinations required of S&Ls as well as attacking political opponents who were sounding early alarms about the S&L industry. Industry insiders were aware of significant S&L problems as early 1986 that they felt would require a bailout. This information was kept from the media until after Bush had won the 1988 elections.

Jeb Bush defaulted on a $4.56 million loan from Broward Federal Savings in Sunrise, Florida. After federal regulators closed the S&L, the office building that Jeb used the $4.56 million to finance was reappraised by the regulators at $500,000, which Bush and his partners paid. The taxpayers had to pay back the remaining 4 million plus dollars.

Neil Bush was the most widely targeted member of the Bush family by the press in the S&L scandal. Neil became director of Silverado Savings and Loan at the age of 30 in 1985. Three years later the institution was belly up at a cost of $1.6 billion to tax payers to bail out.

The basic actions of Neil Bush in the S&L scandal are as follows:

Neil received a $100,000 "loan" from Ken Good, of Good International, with no obligation to pay any of the money back.

Good was a large shareholder in JNB Explorations, Neil Bush's oil-exploration company.

Neil failed to disclose this conflict-of-interest when loans were given to Good from Silverado, because the money was to be used in joint venture with his own JNB. This was in essence giving himself a loan from Silverado through a third party.

Neil then helped Silverado S&L approve Good International for a $900,000 line of credit.

Good defaulted on a total $32 million in loans from Silverado.

During this time Neil Bush did not disclose that $3 million of the $32 million that Good was defaulting on was actually for investment in JNB, his own company.

Good subsequently raised Bush's JNB salary from $75,000 to $125,000 and granted him a $22,500 bonus.

Neil Bush maintained that he did not see how this constituted a conflict of interest.

Neil approved $106 million in Silverado loans to another JNB investor, Bill Walters.

Neil also never formally disclosed his relationship with Walters and Walters also defaulted on his loans, all $106 million of them.

Neil Bush was charged with criminal wrongdoing in the case and ended up paying $50,000 to settle out of court. The chief of Silverado S&L was sentenced to 3.5 years in jail for pleading guilty to $8.7 million in theft. (Keep in mind that you can get more jail time for holding up a gas station for $50.)

Since ordinary New Yorkers seem to be powerless to prevent this sort of outrage, can I suggest a way of exacting what little revenge is available to us? How about an old-fashioned shunning? Chances are you know someone who works for one of these institutions. Tell them how angry you are. De-friend them on Facebook (but tell them why before you do). Drop them from your Christmas card list. Don't invite them to your birthday party. Sure, they'll probably say that they weren't the ones responsible, but you can be sure they're taking advantage of all that taxpayer money on some level - they still have jobs, right? If you get introduced to someone at a party and they mention they work for one of these banks, don't feel the need to be polite: tell them you have no desire to be associated with the lowlifes (lowlives?) who work in that industry.

Will it stop the madness? No, but it might make you feel better.

Cripes, are you an 11 year old girl?

Just give it some thought - you are advocating that the government arbitrarily step in and negate contract law to respond to populist opinions.

I have a better idea Christopher... Don't vote for Barrack Obama again.

We're talking about bailouts that happened under who's presidency? say it loud!

Who's eight year reign led to this? say it loud!

BUSH!

If you hate Obama that's ok but don't twist the truth to fit your agenda.

Bush had eight years to avert the economic meltdown and did NOTHING!

You're smarter than that, don't let your hate for Obama cloud your judgement.

Don't get me wrong, I thought Bush was the WORST, and his policies were terrible. He without a doubt started these bailouts. But then Obama stepped in and just kept em going. In fact, he stepped up and made them even more ridiculous than Bush did.

CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGE

Can't speak for the rest of my fellow New Yorkers, but that's a mistake I'm proud to say I never made.

Spare some outrage for congress who has thrown the country into a bottomless pit of debt yet votes itself pay raises and lavish perks. Oh, and they're the ones who gave the banks the bail out money in the first place.

Totally true.

What did we really expect would happen? You throw billions of dollars at banks, they make record "profits", and then they think they deserve these bonuses. We should all be ashamed for giving them this money in the first place, and we really have nobody to blame but ourselves and the officials we elected.

LET EM FAIL

I would rather have seen that bail out money go to insure the savings of individual account holders as the banks themselves fail. That said, the government imposed a lot of stupid, politically motivated regulations on them that went against all financial common sense. I blame the banks for not standing up for economic sanity. In other words, a pox on both houses.

Of course you'd try to spin that into yet again another fault of the gov't. As if you have the brains to even land a job paying that much in bonuses.

Go ahead, insult the messenger when you can't deal with the substance of the comment.