The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "savings and loans" ...
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Profiting from the Auto-Bailout
September, 2012 the Obama campaign launched television ads blasting Romney’s November 2008 New York Times op-ed, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” In an article for The Nation Magazine, funded by The Nation Investigative Fund we discovered that Ann Romney, personally gained at least $15.3 million from the bailout—and a few of Romney’s most important Wall Street donors made more than $4 billion. Their gains, and the Romneys’, were astronomical—more than 3,000 percent on their investment. It all starts with Delphi Automotive, a former General Motors subsidiary whose auto parts remain essential to GM’s production lines. No bailout of GM—or Chrysler, for that matter—could have been successful without saving Delphi. So, in addition to making massive loans to automakers in 2009, the federal government sent, directly or indirectly, more than $12.9 billion to Delphi—and to the hedge funds that had gained control over it. One of the hedge funds profiting from that bailout— $1.28 billion at the time of publication — was Elliott Management, directed by Romney supporter, Paul Singer.
Tags: Bailout; political campaign; Obama; Romney; Paul Singer
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World of Trouble
This story is a “rare account of the forces that created the U.S. housing bubble and tore the world economy to pieces”. The major finding of the story was executives inside one of the largest lending companies, deliberately ignored warnings from their front line salesmen. This company was loaning money to people who would not be able to pay them back and later was victim to “more than 30 billion dollars of bad loans”.
Tags: World Savings and Loan; Golden West Financial; Wachovia; bank; mortgage; industry; Paul Bishop; homeowners
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Wall Street Concocts New Tax-Saving Ploy; Then It's Feds' Turn
Michael D. Thomson, a Washington bureaucrat, uncovers a new ploy major corporations are using to generate billions of dollars worth of tax deductions. The maneuver, which is known as "step-down preferred stock," helped corporations elude federal income taxes by increasing the deductibility of loan repayments.
Tags: Taxes; loan repayments; corporations
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Land Lords: How a Trio of Texans Turned S&L Debacle Into Personal Fortunes
The Journals tells the story of Rene Campos, Adam Weis and Greg Smith, who were will to gamble with real estate property after Texas savings-and-loan crisis. The three bought properties from the Resolution Trust Company, "the federal agency created to clean up the mess," fixed them and started profiting from the cheap undervalued property. The profit did not come from speculative "flipping," but from clearing and managing the properties.
Tags: business; drugs; apartment complexes; investments; tenants
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Say Uncle
Attorneys Richard Ritter and Paul Hancock investigated allegations that race, not income, appeared to be the 'decisive factor' in whether mortgage applicants got loans. Their chief target was the biggest and most powerful lender in the Washington area, Chevy Chase Federal Savings Bank. Before a year had passed, the two would turn the banking and thrift industries upside down.
Tags: discrimination; Chevy Chase Bank; Department of Justice; Civil Rights Division; race; Washington's mortgage industry
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The Debacle that Buried Washington
The savings and loan scandal had some lasting impact in the late 90s. In 1996, the Supreme Court ruled that the Federal Government had betrayed investors by changing the rules of the bailouts at the height of the crisis. The cost of that decision was to be decided by lower Federal courts and it could be as much as $50 billion.
Tags: savings and loans; investments; SEC; economy; government
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Foreclosing on despair
In a five-month investigation of the foreclosure business, Denver Post finds that homeowners and tenants have been victimized by foreclosure investors who forged house deeds and other documents. Some people who signed agreements, hoping to save their houses, soon lost the property, the story reveals. At the same time investors have been making double or triple more than what they originally spent to get a deed. The investigation finds that most often the object of fraud have been low-income and unschooled residents, as well as minorities.
Tags: loans; investors; houses; minorities; creditors; homeowners; mortgage; CAR
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Hide And Seek
The New Times reports on the exploits of Dallas developer Lou Reese. Reese went to prison for his involvement in savings and loan scandals in the 1980s, but his creditors have been unable to collect the millions owed to him because his fortune is allegedly hidden in off-shore accounts, in his children's trust funds and in property in his wife's name. As a businessman Reese seems to be able to stay a few steps ahead of the game, even though his portfolio is full of questionable deals.
Tags: real estate; off-shore accounts; savings and loan scandal
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Bob's Hope
Nelson investigated "the financial and legal shenanigans he (Robert Burns, a key player in the rise and fall of the Arizona land market and the Arizona Savings and Loan industry in the 1980s) used to survive the last decade and emerge once again as a major player in the Arizona land market. ... It was a story about one somewhat ethically-challeged man's unsinkable will to survive. Our investigation found a decade-long litany of questionable deals implicating RTC, bank and civil officials."
Tags: banking; Robert Burns; Arizona Savings and Loan; Arizona land market; finances
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Banking on Fear
The American Bar Association Journal reports that "this is part revisionist history of the banking and savings & loan scandals of the 1980s-early-90s, but more significantly a look at how unprecedented powers subsequently given to regulators to clean up the mess created a 'Frankenstein monster' that harmed and destroyed a lot of innocent bankers and investors. This story shows that not only did Congress in large part create the problem by loosening regulation of savings & loans, its hasty attempt to fix the problem in 1989 with the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act beefed up a bureaucracy that has failed to pull back from cases even after it learns the targets are innocent...."