Crossword-Solution: KITING 6 letters, 13 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 11

One windy morning when the leaves were kiting over the valley we were getting ready for pounding hominy, when a figure appeared on the trail.

While his competitors were "kiting" checks and waiting, hat in hand, on the good nature of the money lenders, Rockefeller always had a large bank balance, upon which he could instantly draw for his operations.

Yet when the cat is out of the bag as in several recent cases the methods used are often of the baldest and most transparent sort, fictitious names, dummies, and all sorts of juggling and kiting of checks.

Beauty, old age, callow boyhood, fading manhood, all chase the bubble values of the "kiting stocks." From session to session, the volatile heart of San Francisco throbs responsive to the sliding values of these paper "stock certificates." Woods has departed for a fortnight, to look at a new ranch in San Joaquin.

Here's Shapiro's October 1991 testimony about the check-kiting and related scandals: "Hutton had had a very bad press because of some federal charges, and they were very sensitive about adverse publicity." "Hutton had had a series of bad newspaper notices and was very sensitive to criticism in the press." Apparently the only lesson Hutton learned was that federal felony charges are bad publicity.