Robert Maxwell Goes to Texas: The Story of Bluebonnet
April 4th, 2023Via: Unlimited Hangout:
Understanding Bluebonnet requires unpacking a tangled and diffuse web of fraudsters, intelligence assets, bankers and real estate developers who together rampaged across Texas and surrounding states during the mid-1980s, bilking and crashing a near-limitless number of thrifts and related lending institutions in a then-unprecedented spree of brazen financial crime. Much of this was exactly what the mainstream narrative of the S&L crisis said it was: runaway greed enabled by deregulatory fever, which allowed crooks to spirit away untold sums. Yet, this isn’t the full picture. In many instances, it seems that money was siphoned off into offshore accounts, where it was then used to help finance covert intelligence operations—support for the Contras of Nicaragua, and for the transfer of arms and sensitive technology to the Middle East.
