Funny Money
Morrissey, Daniel
the right, and more recently, in the technocratic schemes of those who fantasize that the survival of Western civilization depends upon the advent of a society totally administered by a...
...Continental continued to teeter from after-shocks following Penn Square's collapse, and in July, 1984 the F.D.I.C...
...What he has learned in wrestling with the legacy of I The wells went dry I FUNNY NOIIEY Mark Singer Knopf, $15.95, 222 pp...
...Extended conversation with Habermas could only lead, as had similar conversation with Weber among liberal Protestant theologians, to a progressive abandonment of the revolutionary hope of Christians...
...Marxism, we theologians should know in order to teach Christianity well...
...Special Report: Evangelical-Roman Catholic Dialogue on Mission For new subscn't~rs to the / . ~ International Bulletin of /~4~:~j p.v~ m~tmgs ~ took pl~ l ~ /I over a period of seven years...
...Is it some agency of the federal government...
...Anderson was pushed into retirement a year and a half after the Penn Square crash, but glided to his fall on a golden parachute worth $550 thousand a year...
...Singer aptly calls this "Musical Lending...
...Singer's fine grasp of the details of oiland gas-financing is amply matched by his deft characterizations of the two worlds that came together in this fiscal fiasco...
...Compare: "Another friend once endeavored to explain to me how Oklahoma City is distinctive -- how it differs from, say, Tulsa, which is regarded as sleek and 'Eastern' by Oklahomans who have never tasted the delights of a St...
...Peter Beyerhaus Joan Chatf~ld Harvle Co~n Joan Dclaney Orlando Cos~as Pterm Duprcy David Hubbard Basd Meekmg Osel-Mensah Jorge Mejla Peter Savage Pletro Rossano John R Stott Thomas F Swansky " .. it 'has been a search for such common ground ~ might be discover~l between Evangehc'As and Roman 'Calhohcs as they each try to be faithful in thetr ot~dlence to mission " For this speoal offer, payment must accompany order Send payment wtth coupon to INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH PO...
...Singer also introduces us to Patterson's boss, Bill P. "Beep" Jennings, the bank's chairman and principal stockholder, another affable Oklahoman who liked to think big and disregarded all advice to reign in Patterson...
...Blame lies on all those in the chain of authority starting with the bank's chairman Roger Anderson who decreed that Continental should lend at a par with the two American giants, Bank of America and Citibank...
...Daniel Morrisseu I ULY 6, 1982, the morning after federal investigators shut down the Penn Square Bank, I was eating my first breakfast of biscuits and gravy in a Tulsa diner...
...In FREE...
...In Brief EXCESS: EROS AND CULTURE, by Alphonso Lingis...
...Within a theological paradigm shift similar to Habermas's own, the perennial truth of that revolutionary hope may at last be salvaged from the currently fading rhetorics of liberation that have perhaps unwittingly tended to obscure it even in seeking to proclaim it...
...Box 2057, Venmor, NJ 08406 USA Enclosed is my check for new sub,~nptlon 'and free special i.~ne on "Evangehcal--Roman Cathohc I~a/ogue on M~ss~on " [] I yr $14 D 2yrs $26 {~ 3 y~, $37 Name Address City State ____ Zap Country _ _ FREE POSTAGE WORLDWIDE / OFFER EXPIRFS, 4- ',0-8(~ 14 February 1986:91WESTON SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY Cambridl[e, Massachusetts 1922-1986 A National Jesuit Theolosical Center Announces a New Prolp'am in Spirituality There will be 3 Core Courses in Biblical Spirituality...
...had to infuse the bank with a billion dollars of new capital, virtually taking over Continental to prevent further damage to even larger interconnected banks...
...Instead, it aggressively courted high-rolling energy prospectors and "upstreamed" their business to Continental and other major institutions like Chase Manhattan and Michigan National that followed the well-reputed Chicago bank's lead...
...Still, fiscal restraint might have prevailed if not for the peculiar brand of business brashness that Singer calls "Okiesmo...
...Theology of the Spiritual life...
...I prefer to think of Habermas as perhaps the Aristode of our times...
...degree or the Master of Theology (Th.M...
...degree For further information contact: Rev...
...I am confident that the crisis in church and gociety which, among other things, inspires this paradigm shift, alas, is severe enough and will be protracted enough to allow this conversation to proceed at its own pace...
...The epilogue has been written by bankruptcy lawyers...
...Weston School of Theolo~ 3 Phillips Place Cambridlio, MA 02138 (617) 492-1960 Contact Father Devine for information about any of our other degrees and programs this, Penn Square and Continental were acting more like loan brokers and venture' capitalists than conservative commercial bankers...
...At its peak Lytle's portfolio contained over one billion dollars in loans bought through Continental's shopping center correspondent in Oklahoma City...
...The pivotal person in this mad money-merchantizing was Bill "Monkeybrains" Patterson, a man in his early thirties who ran Penn Square's oil and gas lending division like an OU fraternity rush...
...1977-1984, m Vemce, Cambridge, 'and 9 Lan~vennec...
...If Lytle had scrutinized Patterson's practices he would have seen collateral and loan balances shuffled from one borrower's account to another to meet whatever inquiries were coming from upstream lenders...
...what we must teach him about religious faith and reason we have yet to understand very well ourselves...
...Singer well notes, however, that nagging questions remain about the competency of those charged with superintending Penn Square's affairs...
...Prepare yourself for a trip in style into the erotic foundations of culture -through Lingis's first-person accounts of journeys to the bottom of the sea, to East Africa, medieval Khajuraho in India, to Commonweal: 92...
...The Spirituality Concentration can be done within the Master of Theological Studies (M.T.S...
...When more cautious bank officers questioned one of those transactions, he brushed them off with his favorite phrase: "Hey, that's a done deal...
...Revelations in the following months, however, would show how this latter-day wildcat bank nearly undermined our entire monetary structure through its perverse kinship with the nation's eighth largest bank, Continental Illinois, an institution I knew better from my Chicago roots...
...They think I play the piano in a whorehouse.' " Penn Square's problems arose because it did not behave as local banks traditionally do, making auto and small business loans to neighborhood folk...
...Were federal examiners too lenient in giving Penn Square time to work out its problems...
...whose identity so rightly concerned my first breakfast companions in Tulsa...
...The bumper sticker said, 'Don't tell my folks I'm working in the oil patch...
...The middle-level Continental official whom Patterson cultivated was John Lytie...
...Upwardly mobile Okiesmo was a white Lincoln Continental with one hubcap missing...
...State University of New York, $9.95 paper, 163 pp...
...As a corporate lawyer beginning a teaching career in what then to me was a remote area of the country, the failure of a shopping center bank in my new state capital took second place to other, more pressing matters like finding an apartment...
...Foremost in this group was the suave Robert A. Hefner III, tireless promoter of the myth that the deep gas in the Anadarko Basin held the key to the salvation of the planet...
...France Partlctpants include...
...Now the fantastic story of this fateful Oklahoma City/Chicago financial axis is told in a colorfully anecdotal style by Mark Singer, a Tulsa native with an Ivy League education and ten-years' experience on the staff of The New Yorker...
...A number of years ago at a symposium on his significance for the development of postmodern theologies, Dorothee Soelle, a partisan in behalf of Christian liberationism, bemoaned the fact that, in her view, Habermas had become the Max Weber for this generation...
...Full portraits are also drawn of numerous "oilies," all of whom it seems had substantial contacts with Republican politicians and Las Vegas entertainers...
...Patterson stretched or ignored prudent lending standards and neglected necessary paperwork, often getting his borrowers to sign blank promissory notes...
...Such is the concrete hope that Habermas seeks to vindicate...
...Louis or an Indianapolis," with "The archetypal Continental banker was a midwestern Catholic who rode the commuter train home each night to one of the leafy northern or western Chicago suburbs -- wonderful places to raise t families...
...Why did Peat, Marwick, and Mitchell give the bank a clean opinion three months before it was closed...
...More truly perfidious than these playful practitioners of Okiesmo were the Continental bankers who should have known better...
...History of Spirituality and Elective Courses in spirituality and spiritual direction...
...Was it outright greed or blind stupidity that caused this debacle...
...The regulars around me kept asking each other in their strange drawls, "What is this F.D.I.C...
...When the energy business fell into decline during the first half of 1982, Penn Square's hydrocarbonated bubble burst...
...He made enticing deals with Patterson on the understanding that the paperwork would follow, yet rarely checked when it didn't...
...the right, and more recently, in the technocratic schemes of those who fantasize that the survival of Western civilization depends upon the advent of a society totally administered by a hierarchy of managerial bureaucracies, may thus turn out to be more apparent than real...
...Singer's final interviews with the "oilies" hint that with indestructible Okiesmo they are shaking off their creditors' committees and praying for that blessed day when the air forces of Iran and Iraq take out each other's oil fields...
...Ultimately the federal government did pay the price in the person of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (the proper name of the F.D.I.C...
...When that or some other event sets off the next oil boom, the regulators had better be ready...
...The conversation with Habermas that I have in mind would help clarify the revolutionary hope of Christians by releasing it from its current captivity to a host of ideologies still bound in turn to an outworn philosophy of consciousness...
...Stories abound of how he would meet clients wearing Mickey Mouse ears and entertain them with food fights in ritzy restaurants...
...Clint Eastwood and Ordinary People team up to ruin the American monetary system...
...Some of both, finds Singer, along with economic factors in the late seventies and early eighties that prompted rust-belt banks to "put out their assets" with the one American industry that was not dying, "oil and gas...
...J. Frank Devine, SJ...
Vol. 113 • February 1986 • No. 3
