It was my first story series as a cub reporter, and I wasn't used to the idea of death threats. Especially over a small-town bank branch. But that series on Queen City Savings and Loan, in Washington State, led to the first convictions in federal court in what became known later as the savings and loan crisis. People went to jail, and paid millions in fines.

By the time it was done more than $750 billion had been transferred from one place to another. The "from" was almost entirely taxpayers' wallets; the "to" was highly varied, moving from small-time operators like the president's brother Neil Bush (fined and reprimanded for his role) out to the Mafia.

What started out as a bad idea in Washington, D.C., ended up enriching thousands of people, most of them illegally, while destabilizing the U.S. banking system.

In this sense, that story is not so different from what is mis-named the "subprime crisis" of today -- except that, even adjusting for inflation, the numbers are now much, much larger. But the money is still coming from our pockets, and going into -- now, that's the criminal question, isn't it?

In the S&L crisis, changes in how deposits were federally insured suddenly opened the doors to all kinds of (federally protected) malfeasance at the amateur, local level. But it didn't take too long before organized crime smelled the money, and began an organized campaign to loot scores of small banks.

Today, the story runs slightly differently: a huge drop in interest rates by then-Fed chief Alan Greenspan was guaranteed to cause "Refi Madness," and it did. Misbehavior by banks and mortgage brokerages was fairly predictable, as banks learned they could make more money on fees than the loans themselves, which were quickly unloaded. (This also had the unintended consequence of cutting commercial banks free from Fed interest rate pressures.) Who cares if the loans go bad, when you don't own them for more than a couple of weeks? Or, if all your pay comes from loan-generation fees at a brokerage?

Well, the folks buying those loans should have cared. But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two largest buyers, have been so poorly run over the last few years that they were losing billions themselves, and couldn't keep their own books straight, much less monitor loan quality. And then, just as in the S&L crisis, the sharks moved in.

Taking a package of loans with poor, faulty or no documentation, and re-packaging them into Structured Investment Vehicles (SIV), or Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO), gave them the imprimatur of the issuing investment bank. Because they represented U.S. home mortgages, traditionally a gold-plated investment, these were quickly (and gullibly) swallowed up by buyers from New York to Norway (there are literally small villages in Norway now facing financial doom because of this.)

Investment banks, hedge funds, and a litany of other large buyers and resellers sent these packages throughout the global food chain, adding fees, and distance, between buyer and seller.

I suggested above, and earlier in my newsletter, that this latest scandal was misnamed. I suspect that half or more of the bad loans were made to borrowers above the sub-prime credit category, but still got in over their heads. Banks who coerced appraisers into reporting too-high values have their own culpability here, as whole real estate markets accelerated in price from the gasoline of fraudulent appraisals.

Later, when prices collapsed, it was the banks and their appraisers, as well as the repackagers, who were caught red-handed. And today, these are the primary suspects in criminal investigations by the FBI, SEC and others.

Someone should have told these people what your mother told you, and what we all learned from