Brush with infamy

I'm helping my father apply for Social Security benefits, and we spent most of yesterday looking for his naturalization papers and passports. (Unlike me, he's on the grid.) We came across a file of his old stock certificates, which is pretty cool in and of itself, but I especially liked this letter.

Click the link, zoom in, scroll down, and note the signature. That's Charles Keating, he of the Savings and Loan scandals of the early 1990s. Before his downfall he was an active campaigner against porn, producing a film in 1965 "linking pornography to the Communist conspiracy and the decline of Western civilization." His group Citizens for Decent Literature was among the first to speak out and bring obscenity charges against fellow Cincinnati businessman and Hustler publisher Larry Flynt. (James Cromwell played Mr. Keating in this movie.)

Also note the name of the company in the letterhead: American Continental Homes. According to this article in the Cincinnati Post, Mr. Keating dropped the "Homes" in order to focus on investing. In 1984 American Continental bought Lincoln Savings, which later would become synonymous with the scandal. Read a more articulate history here.

So we hold in our hands a small piece of stockholder history. Is this a good or bad thing? Only our investment broker knows for sure.