Federal Home Loan Bank Board

President Reagan said Friday that he was making two recess appointments to the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, an agency that has lacked a quorum to make policy decisions for the last three weeks. Reagan said he was using his power to temporarily bypass the Senate confirmation process and immediately put Lee Henkel Jr. and Lawrence J. White on the board, which regulates the nation's savings and loan industry. Henkel, an Atlanta attorney and businessman, will succeed Donald I. Hovde.

Adding to another quake-assistance program, a Los Angeles city housing panel backed a proposal Monday to increase by $10 million the amount of money available for owners and investors interested in repairing quake-damaged apartments. The city will issue $10 million in tax-exempt bonds to help private banks and lending institutions finance repairs of about 500 properties citywide, according to the proposal approved by the City Council's Housing and Community Redevelopment Committee.

Congressional investigators Thursday disclosed what they said was evidence indicating that Lincoln Savings & Loan owner Charles H. Keating Jr. and top federal regulators had privately agreed to a plan in 1988 that helped the troubled Irvine thrift avoid a government seizure for nearly a year. House Banking Committee Chairman Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Tex.

Lee H. Henkel Jr., once one of the nation's top thrift regulators, was barred Wednesday from the savings and loan industry because of alleged conflicts in dealings with former Lincoln Savings & Loan operator Charles H. Keating Jr. The ban, the first to be imposed against a major former S&L regulator, was part of a settlement of charges brought by the Office of Thrift Supervision. Henkel, an Atlanta lawyer, also agreed to pay $50,000 in restitution and not to practice before the OTS.

Lawrence J. White has notified President Bush that he intends to resign as a member of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, effective Aug. 18. White said he planned to return to his position as a professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business.

The Federal Home Loan Bank Board said deposits at federally insured savings and loan associations exceeded withdrawals by $1.73 billion in February. It was the biggest monthly gain since last August and was more than $1 billion higher than the $700-million gain in January.

President Bush announced Wednesday that the government will provide $600 million in low-interest loans for South Los Angeles and other areas devastated in the violent aftermath of the Rodney King verdicts. The new loan funds, to be made available through the Federal Home Loan Bank Board system, are in addition to $600 million in emergency funds already designated for the stricken city and a host of other urban aid programs being considered by Congress and the President.

Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) wrote a letter to the Federal Home Loan Bank Board in September, 1988, at the request of a contributor, David L. Paul, owner of CenTrust Savings Bank, the Miami-based thrift owned partly by the scandal-ridden Bank of Credit & Commerce International, according to a report published Saturday.

Monthly payments for homeowners with adjustable-rate mortgages continue to fall at one of the fastest rates ever, a development expected to save millions of California homeowners hundreds--and in many cases thousands--of dollars in payments this year. That trend was underscored Monday with the announcement that the 11th District cost of funds index--the measure commonly used to set ARM payments in California, dropped for the 11th consecutive month in August to 6.

Dean M. Schultz, a longtime thrift industry lawyer and executive, is expected to be named today to head the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, a quasi-government agency that mostly provides credit to savings and loans, sources said Tuesday. Schultz is executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York. He will replace James M. Cirona, who resigned abruptly in January as head of the bank.

James M. Cirona, the former top federal regulator of savings and loans in California, Nevada and Arizona, abruptly resigned Thursday as president and chief executive of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco. The bank is a quasi-government agency whose primary job is to provide credit to savings and loans. It was once part of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board's San Francisco office, which Cirona headed from 1983 to 1989 when it had supervisory powers over thrifts in the region.

Federal regulators were not politically pressured to go easy on Charles H. Keating Jr.'s savings and loan association, a former government supervisor told the Senate Ethics Committee.

The so-called "Keating Five" senators applied pressure on regulators in support of "probably the worst institution in America," Charles H. Keating Jr.'s Lincoln Savings & Loan, a federal regulator said today. William K. Black, testifying before the Senate Ethics Committee's public hearings, asserted that one result of the senators' pressure was to delay enforcement actions against Lincoln--ultimately leading to greater losses for taxpayers.