Thrifts And Loans

Edwin T. McBirney III cut a wide swath through the lending circles of this city a few years ago when he owned and operated Sunbelt Savings Assn., known as Gunbelt Savings during the go-go McBirney era. High-strung and jet-fueled, McBirney was widely known as "Fast Eddie" because of his love for big development deals done with flair and dispatch.

Federal regulators Friday seized insolvent FarWest Savings & Loan Assn., the large thrift controlled by the wealthy Belzberg brothers of Canada, because of mounting losses from junk bonds and bad real estate loans. The failure of Newport Beach-based FarWest, which had $3.8 billion in assets, ranks among the largest in Southern California. Federal regulators would not estimate the cost of the collapse to taxpayers, but one industry analyst said it could approach $500 million.

Homeowner Robert Dallek was feeling low when his banker told him that his West Los Angeles neighborhood had been declared a depressed area. The bank sent an urgent letter demanding that Dallek immediately take steps to protect his house. Not from shrinking property values, but from rising floodwaters. Hydrologists had determined that Dallek's expensive Rancho Park neighborhood was sitting in a low-lying flood hazard zone.

The collapse of Lincoln Savings & Loan of Irvine may be the most costly thrift failure on record, but the pattern of high-risk investments, rosy accountant reports and efforts to wield political influence were painfully familiar to federal regulators. While the example set by Lincoln was "the worst of the worst," its downfall was a replay of other catastrophic S&L failures during the last five years, according to testimony by William K.

Columbia Savings & Loan filed a criminal report with federal authorities this month alleging that former Chief Executive Thomas Spiegel took an estimated $170,000 in office furnishings belonging to the Beverly Hills-based thrift, sources familiar with the report said Tuesday. The disclosure is the latest in a bizarre series of twists involving Spiegel and Columbia, which was seized by regulators on Friday after suffering huge losses on its portfolio of risky, high-yield junk bonds.

Charles Keating Jr. and members of his family received $34 million in salaries, bonuses and payments for their stock from American Continental Corp. in the three years before it went bankrupt and its major subsidiary, Lincoln Savings & Loan Assn., was taken over by the federal government, federal regulators disclosed Tuesday. Lincoln's collapse is expected to cost taxpayers up to $2 billion, and has raised questions about the involvement of legislators, including Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.

Former Woodland Hills developer Michael R. Goland was convicted on Tuesday of conspiring to secretly take over a Santa Monica savings and loan using $900,000 borrowed from state Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Tarzana). Goland was found guilty by a federal court jury after a three-week trial in which prosecutors said he bought a controlling interest in Viking Savings & Loan by funneling $1.1 million through 10 friends and business associates posing as independent investors.

Two of Southern California's best-known thrifts--Imperial Savings in San Diego and Mercury Savings in Huntington Beach--were seized Friday by government regulators in a further crackdown on the nation's largest troubled savings and loans. Imperial, the 15th-largest thrift in the nation and 12th-largest in California as of Sept.

A controversial decision made 2 1/2 years ago by federal thrift regulators in Washington will emerge as a focal point of House Banking Committee hearings that begin today into the failure of Lincoln Savings & Loan in Irvine. The hearings before the 51-member committee are loaded with political overtones. Committee Chairman Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Tex.

Southern California's once-booming commercial real estate market, which dramatically altered the region's office skylines in the 1980s, is in the early stages of a bust that may last two years or more, property experts believe. While not as severe as in other regions of the country, the downturn nonetheless could further depress the Southern California economy when it is already reeling from thousands of aerospace industry layoffs. "We're in the throes of a real estate recession . .