The film maker Frank Capra once summed up his optimistic outlook by stating flatly: “People’s instincts are good. Never bad. As right as the soil.” None of Capra’s films expresses this sentiment more forcefully than It’s a Wonderful Life . The popular 1946 fantasy tells the story of George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart), the benevolent owner of a small-town building-andloan company who rediscovers his self-worth with the help of a guardian angel.

One wonders how Capra’s faith in the fundamental goodness of the people would square with the behavior of George Bailey’s professional descendants, the S&L bandits of the 1980s. The answer is easy. It lies in Capra’s definition of “the people.” Capra did not mean the population as a whole; he championed “the little man,” the hardworking, virtuous middle class. George Bailey is the quintessential “little man"; Charles Keating is not.

The S&L thieves of the 1980s bear a greater resemblance to Henry F. Potter, the villainous banker played by Lionel Barrymore in the film. Potter, “the richest and meanest man in the county,” schemes to take over Bailey’s small business, the only institution in town on which he doesn’t have a financial strangle hold. Not surprisingly, Potter has connections on Capitol Hill. In one scene he keeps a congressman waiting outside his office while he plots a real estate scam with his sleazy rent collector. George Bailey’s only contact with the federal government comes when his soldier brother Harry wins the Congressional Medal of Honor.

George Bailey’s father started his building-and-loan company for the same reason that many S&Ls originated: to help friends and neighbors build decent homes. After inheriting the business, George struggles to keep it away from Potter, who will no doubt use it only to enrich himself and his very different sort of friends. George is not entirely above thoughts of wealth; he often wishes he were a millionaire and could ditch his family’s “cheap, penny-ante” operation. But he cannot bring himself to abandon his townspeople. He passes up a prime investment opportunity in plastics to continue waging his fight, and he even lends his depositors money out of his own pocket to stave off a panic that threatens to shut his doors forever.

Potter, meanwhile, steps up his campaign to crush George Bailey, finally framing him for stealing money. Driven to the depths of despair, George attempts suicide, only to be saved by his guardian angel. The angel takes him on a guided tour of the town, showing him how bleak life would have been had he never been born. Spiritually redeemed, George returns home to find that all his friends have tossed their spare money into a hat to make up the amount that Potter has stolen. The S&L crisis will be resolved in a similar fashion—except that each one of us will have to chip in two thousand dollars.