One of the failures of regulation in the Bush era has been that it over-looked fraud. It appears that it enabled fraud as well:
The backdating let IndyMac restore its risk-based capital ratio to the 10 percent "well-capitalized" minimum threshold in the first quarter. It also enabled the lender to avoid complying with a law that requires banks to get an FDIC waiver to accept brokered depositsAccording to the article the Office of Thrift Supervision allowed other companies to do it as well. So rather being regulatory oversight, they enabled fraud to occur. In responsible government heads are supposed to roll for incompetence, questionable decision making and for flat out disregard of legal process. There are a lot of people in the Bush Administration that should be resigning in shame. It is not happening however, given how incompetence and failure has been rewarded under Bush, this is not a surprise. Pretty sad that government has sunk to that low.
