My brother lives in Maumee and has been following this story for weeks. He too says it is not helpful.
The more things change the more they stay the same. I thought I would post a flash from the past.
Mr. Warner's free fall after the 1985 collapse of Home State was dizzying.
He had personal wealth — about $125 million before the Home State collapse — and political power, enough to help elect Democrats to statewide office in Ohio and earn him an appointment from President Carter as ambassador to Switzerland in the late 1970s.
Born in Birmingham, Ala., the son of a baker, he earned a law degree from the University of Alabama that he never used.
Instead, he came to Cincinnati as a young man in the early 1950s and launched a career as a developer. His mark on the city is obvious even today — he developed the housing tracts that became the city of Forest Park and built huge projects such as the Highland Towers, which dominates the Mount Adams landscape.
In 1958, he branched out into finance, buying Home State Savings Bank. He quickly turned it into the dominant force in Ohio's savings and loan industry.
Then, in the late 1970s, he met Ronnie Ewton.
Mr. Ewton was the president of a Fort Lauderdale firm called ESM Government Securities Inc. He had a plan to sell bonds to local government, institutions and individuals that would guarantee overnight dividends.
But to pay off its customers, ESM needed huge infusions of cash. Mr. Warner provided it, pouring hundreds of millions of Home State assets into ESM.
In March 1985, when federal authorities charged ESM with fraud and word spread that Home State was ESM's major investor, a panic struck Southwest Ohio. Home State depositors formed long lines at branch offices trying to take their money out. Four days later, Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste — whose political career had been boosted by Warner cash — closed Home State.
But because Home State was the dominant force in the Ohio Deposit Guaranty Fund, its collapse wiped out deposit insurance for all other state-chartered savings and loans.
Thousands of depositors around the state had no access to their money for weeks. In the end, though, no depositor lost a dime.
The Ohio General Assembly ended up passing legislation to spend $129 million for the bailout of Home State and found a buyer for the wrecked institution — Mr. Lindner, who folded Home State into his Hunter Savings Bank.