The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry

William K. Black, a former Director of Litigation for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, provides an insider account of the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. He documents how corrupt CE Os and CF Os, often working with regulators who failed to oversee them, used accounting fraud to loot companies for personal gain. Black details the investigations he conducted, including those involving Charles Keating and hundreds of other S&L owners who exploited weak regulatory environments. Black applies criminology and economics to develop a theory of "control fraud"—the practice of looting a company for personal profit—explaining why such fraud tends to occur in waves that destabilize financial markets. He outlines methods to prevent these cycles. In a new afterword, he connects the S&L collapse to the business failures of 2008 and beyond, arguing that executives then and now employ similar tactics to circumvent regulatory oversight and commit comparable fraud. The book argues that control fraud represents an ongoing, significant threat to business that demands active, independent regulation. Black contends that market forces alone cannot ensure corporate honesty.