Regulator Let IndyMac Bank Falsify Report: Agency Didn't Enforce Its Rules, Inquiry Finds

The Washington Post reports:

A senior federal banking regulator approved a plan by IndyMac Bank to exaggerate its financial health in a May federal filing, allowing the California company to avoid regulatory restrictions only two months before it collapsed, a federal inquiry has found.

The same regulatory agency, the Office of Thrift Supervision, allowed similar legerdemain by other banks, according to a letter sent yesterday to members of Congress by the Treasury Department's inspector general, Eric Thorson. The letter did not provide details about the other incidents.

The finding that OTS on several occasions "blessed a fiction," in the words of one congressional staffer, renews questions about the agency's relationship with the companies it regulates and about its complicity in the collapse this year of several of the nation's largest thrifts, including Washington Mutual and Countrywide Financial.

The government can't save you from bogus accounting numbers.