President’s Son and Bailouts of Failed Savings and Loans

The savings and loan mess highlights two interesting points:

1. Congress should never have guaranteed savings deposits up to $100,000. Savings and loan owners with even just a “little” larceny in their hearts have looked upon such a loophole for exactly what it is: a license to steal. Can one imagine, for example, the government guaranteeing the auto makers’ warranties? Or those of any other manufacturer? Quality control would go right out the window as an expensive frill.

Savings and loan deposits should be guaranteed by a fund set up by the S&Ls; themselves, not by me in my retirement, my two children in their ongoing struggle to keep their heads above water and my poor, all unwitting grandchildren.

2. Deregulation, in the name of free enterprise, is like dropping a racehorse’s reins. The freest enterprise we ever had gave us the robber barons. When you have a nation of some 250 million people, free enterprise without rules and regulations is economic anarchy, a throwback to survival of the fittest, every man for himself and rugged individualism.

DAN JENKINS

Pacific Palisades