James O'Shea

An autopsy of the failure of Vernon Savings & Loan, a notorious Texas S&L that collapsed in a welter of bad debts, extravagance, and fraud. Some of the train-wreck descriptions are unintentionally (and perhaps intentionally) funny. There's also quite an emphasis on the connections to politicians, including soon-to-be-disgraced speaker Jim Wright; this was from the twilight era of the Democratic domination of Texas. Recommended for those that like financial trainwrecks (as I do). (My copy was an advance reading copy -- it had a wide variety of typos and errors, but that's common for essentially a near-final draft.)… (meer)