Business Notes THRIFTS

Neither his inexperience nor his admission of having used marijuana and cocaine in the early 1970s seemed as pressing as the need simply to find someone to oversee the troubled savings and loan industry. And so, after berating Timothy Ryan, 44, for his utter unpreparedness for the job, the Senate last week approved his appointment to head the Office of Thrift Supervision by a generous 62-37 vote.

During his confirmation hearings, Ryan, a former Labor Department lawyer, readily conceded that he knows little about the thrift industry or the S&L cleanup, the cost of which Comptroller General Charles Bowsher estimated last week at up to $500 billion. If Ryan was in an awkward position, so were some of his Senate inquisitors, who are themselves under a cloud in the S&L mess. They are accused of favoritism toward thrift owner Charles Keating Jr., who made sizable contributions to their campaigns -- and who was a rapt spectator at the Senate hearings.