Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 19, 1990                   TAG: 9006190387
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IS SCANDAL'S SCOPE FINALLY SINKING IN?

During a political visit earlier this month to New Hampshire, Gov. Douglas Wilder called for an independent investigation of "this scandal of unparalleled dimensions." He drew prolonged applause.

Consider the call a political ploy by a governor with lots of ambition but little actually to do with S&Ls - still, on those grounds alone it's significant that Wilder finds potential gain in exploring causes and culpability. Perhaps in part because some of them are implicated, Democrats on the national stage have not been especially aggressive thus far in attacking the S&L scandal.

Meanwhile, on the same day Wilder was delivering his remarks in New Hampshire, a freshman congressman, Peter P. Smith, R-Vt., gave a one-minute speech on the House floor. He asked for an independent counsel "to investigate the involvement of government officials in the savings-and-loan scandal." Within 48 hours, 118 House members - two-thirds of them Republicans - had co-signed Smith's resolution favoring an inquiry that would include the actions of regulators, the White House and Congress.

When members of Congress start calling for an investigation of their own activities, you know their political antennae are a-quiver.

The public finally seems to be waking up to the size and scope of the S&L bailout. Bank and thrift regulators have referred to the Justice Department 21,000 cases of possible financial fraud. Last month, the Bush administration acknowledged that - including interest and other expenses - the total bill could top half a trillion dollars. Some estimates put it even higher.

What's so scandalous about the scandal is not simply its cost or extent. It's also that for years, so much of the federal government ignored warnings while S&L officials - secure in the expectation that Uncle Sam would cover their assets - recklessly spent and invested shareholders' funds. It's also that some individuals with the right connections could profit from this profligacy and pass the bill to taxpayers. It's also that some S&L officials apparently bought time for their buccaneering with political contributions.

And it's the fact, too, that the hundreds of billions needed for the salvage operation will not be available for - as Wilder put it - "the hospitals we could have built; the highways and airports we could have built; the toxic landfills we could have cleaned up; the elderly we could have cared for; the small businesses we could have stimulated."

Not that public probes and political hearings are likely to produce much. Politicians joining the cry that no holds be barred probably feel that they, or their party, won't be singled out because so many own a share of the blame. They can cite their call for an inquiry as evidence of their own rectitude. A comprehensive investigation will require so much time, lead down so many paths and be so complicated that the public could lose patience and interest. Then the politicians can say: This investigation is taking too long and costing too much; let's wind it up.

Meanwhile, one of the continuing scandals within the scandal is that not nearly enough is being done to track down, prosecute and punish the guilty parties. That's the minimum to expect from a government that napped through the biggest swindle in American history. Yet there still aren't enough federal investigators and prosecutors to do the job.

Attorney General Richard Thornburgh is now attributing perhaps one-third of all the thrift bankruptcies not to mismanagement, but to criminality. Yet it's acknowledged that more than 1,000 cases each involving at least $100,000 in waylaid funds are going uninvestigated. The Justice Department is going after major cases, but is that to suggest that those who stole only, say, $50,000 from the taxpayers, shall be let off the hook?

Yes, it is, unless the politicians perceive more pervasive and persistent public outrage. "Charity," it is said, "shall cover the multitude of sins." In a democracy, the public's short attention span allows a multitude of sins to occur and many of the sinners to escape judgment.