American Notes BAILOUTS

The 1988 collapse of Denver's Silverado Banking, Savings & Loan Association was expected to cost taxpayers more than $1 billion. That burden was eased ever so slightly last week when presidential son Neil Bush and 12 other former associates of Silverado agreed to cough up $49.5 million as part of a settlement of the Federal Government's $200 million civil suit alleging gross negligence and insider dealings.

Under the plan, former officers, directors and lawyers of the failed thrift will pay the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation $26.5 million and turn over to the agency a $23 million executive-indemnity fund established by Silverado before it was seized by the government three years ago. For Neil Bush, 36, an outside director of Silverado from 1985 to 1988, the development marks the latest setback in his ill-starred business career. Last April, in a separate action, the Office of Thrift Supervision formally reprimanded him for engaging in "unsafe" and "unsound" practices involving conflicts of interest.