Hillary Clinton and Arkansas's S&L Scandal Revisited Again

As 1996, 2000 and 2004 presidential candidate Ralph Nader observed in his introduction to Who Robbed America? A Citizen’s Guide to the S&L Scandal by Michael Waldman, “the S&L scandal” was “the most outrageous example of banking corruption and governmental deregulatory complicity in American history;” and “a program designed to safeguard the savings of the middle class and poor was used to subsidize an unprecedented frenzy of speculation and business criminality.” Nader also noted in his 1990 introduction that “the country’s major national media ignored the real S&L story until it was too late” and ignored “the early alerts, reports, press conferences, and street demonstrations by consumer groups.”

In Arkansas, the Clintons’ Whitewater business partner headed the S&L scandal-linked Madison Guaranty bank and 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton did legal work for Madison Guaranty in Arkansas while her husband, Bill Clinton, was Arkansas’s governor. Coincidentally, Investor’s Business Daily (1/26/96) noted that, according to The Greatest-Ever Bank Robbery by Martin Mayer, “the fraction of Arkansas thrifts that came unglued is the highest in the country.” In addition to Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, the following other Arkansas banks were allowed to pursue speculative policies which led to them failing during the years when Hillary’s husband was the state’s governor: Commonwealth S&L Association; First American Savings Bank; First Federal S&L; First Savings of Arkansas; First State Savings Bank; Grand Prairie Federal; Independent Federal S&L; and Savers Saving Association.

(Downtown/Aquarian 3/20/96)

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