Reply #6: When I worked for the FDIC [View All]

[finecraft]

It was during the run of bank failures during the late 80's and early 90's. I worked for the Shreveport office, and we had a caseload of approx. 60 failed and closed banks in Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma. At that time, there were approximately 30 or so "local offices", supervised by 5 larger regional offices. Our office alone had over 600 people. We closed the troubled institutions, tried to collect on their bad and delinquent loans, investigated the actions of their loan officers, bank directors and officers (as well as prosecuted them), and packaged and sold the remaining assets to solvent institutions. We also did regular reviews of the operating banks in the area we covered, and monitored their lending habits and debt ratios like a hawk. When Seidman reorganized the FDIC, he did away with all of the local FDIC offices, as well as half of the regional offices. He effectively did away with the "eyes and ears on the ground". Since then, many banks have gone back to making more questionable loans, and have slipped back into the "good old boy" network of lending and management. Reich is correct in his assessment of the mega-mergers. Some of the banks we closed had BCCI related cases, and it was a mess. The financial web of business is immense, and once one large institution fails, you can bet that a few others will follow shortly. Seidman is a slimey worm, and the only thing he accomplished with his FDIC reorganization was to make it easier for his banking buddies to get away with alot more crap than they ever could before.