The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is one of two agencies that supply deposit insurance to depositors in American depository institutions, the other being the National Credit Union Administration, which regulates and insures credit unions. The FDIC is a United States government corporation supplying deposit insurance to depositors in American commercial banks and savings banks. The FDIC was created by the 1933 Banking Act, enacted during the Great Depression to restore trust in the American banking system. More than one-third of banks failed in the years before the FDIC's creation, and bank runs were common. The insurance limit was initially US$2,500 per ownership category, and this was increased several times over the years. Since the passage of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2011, the FDIC insures deposits in member banks up to US$250,000 per ownership category. FDIC insurance is backed by the full faith and credit of the government of the United States of America, and since its start in 1933 no depositor has ever lost a penny of FDIC-insured funds.
Washington Mutual, Inc—abbreviated to WaMu—was a savings bank holding company and the former owner of WaMu Bank, which was the United States' largest savings and loan association until its collapse in 2008.
In law, receivership is a situation in which an institution or enterprise is held by a receiver—a person "placed in the custodial responsibility for the property of others, including tangible and intangible assets and rights"—especially in cases where a company cannot meet its financial obligations and is said to be insolvent. The receivership remedy is an equitable remedy that emerged in the English chancery courts, where receivers were appointed to protect real property. Receiverships are also a remedy of last resort in litigation involving the conduct of executive agencies that fail to comply with constitutional or statutory obligations to populations that rely on those agencies for their basic human rights.
The savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s was the failure of 1,043 out of the 3,234 savings and loan associations (S&Ls) in the United States from 1986 to 1995. An S&L or "thrift" is a financial institution that accepts savings deposits and makes mortgage, car and other personal loans to individual members.
M&T Bank Corporation is an American bank holding company headquartered in Buffalo, New York. It operates 780 branches in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Connecticut. M&T is ranked 462nd on the Fortune 500. Until May 1998, the bank's holding company was named First Empire State Corporation.
The Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) was a United States federal agency under the Department of the Treasury that chartered, supervised, and regulated all federally chartered and state-chartered savings banks and savings and loans associations. It was created in 1989 as a renamed version of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, another federal agency. Like other U.S. federal bank regulators, it was paid by the banks it regulated. The OTS was initially seen as an aggressive regulator, but was later lax. Declining revenues and staff led the OTS to market itself to companies as a lax regulator in order to get revenue.
Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association was a savings and loan association based in Little Rock, Arkansas. The company operated from 1979 until 1989 when it was shut down by federal regulators as a result of bank failure, leading to a loss of $60 million for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Beginning in 1982, the bank was owned and managed by Jim McDougal, a friend of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. On March 8, 1992, during the 1992 United States presidential election the bank was the subject of an article in The New York Times by Jeff Gerth, which linked the bank to Whitewater Development Corporation, owned by McDougal and the Clintons. After Clinton's election as president, the bank was the subject of investigations by the United States Congress and special prosecutor Ken Starr as part of the Whitewater controversy. McDougal was investigated to determine if he improperly diverted money from the bank to Whitewater or the Clinton campaign during the Arkansas gubernatorial election, 1984.
Great Western Bank was a large retail bank that operated primarily in the Western United States. Great Western's headquarters were in Chatsworth, California. At one time, Great Western was one of the largest savings and loan in the nation, second only to Home Savings of America. The bank was acquired by Washington Mutual in 1997 for $6.8 billion.
The early 1980s recession was a severe economic recession that affected much of the world between approximately the start of 1980 and early 1983. It is widely considered to have been the most severe recession since World War II. A key event leading to the recession was the 1979 energy crisis, mostly caused by the Iranian Revolution which caused a disruption to the global oil supply, which saw oil prices rising sharply in 1979 and early 1980. The sharp rise in oil prices pushed the already high rates of inflation in several major advanced countries to new double-digit highs, with countries such as the United States, Canada, West Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and Japan tightening their monetary policies by increasing interest rates in order to control the inflation. These G7 countries each, in fact, had "double-dip" recessions involving short declines in economic output in parts of 1980 followed by a short period of expansion, in turn followed by a steeper, longer period of economic contraction starting sometime in 1981 and ending in the last half of 1982 or in early 1983. Most of these countries experienced stagflation, a situation of both high interest rates and high unemployment rates.
Old Stone Bank was a popular Rhode Island banking institution that was founded in Providence in 1819 as a mutual savings bank that was called Providence Institution for Savings.
Benj. Franklin Savings and Loan was a thrift based in Portland, in the U.S. state of Oregon. Founded in 1925, the company was seized by the United States Government in 1990. In 1996 the United States Supreme Court found that this and similar seizures were based on an unconstitutional provision of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA). Shareholders of the thrift sued the federal government for damages caused by the seizure, with the shareholders winning several rounds in the courts. In 2013, $9.5 million was allocated for disbursement to shareholders.
The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The five senators—Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, John Glenn, John McCain, and Donald W. Riegle, Jr. —were accused of improperly intervening in 1987 on behalf of Charles H. Keating, Jr., Chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which was the target of a regulatory investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB). The FHLBB subsequently backed off taking action against Lincoln.
Gibraltar Savings and Loan Association was an American bank operating in California, Washington, and Florida. It was organized as a savings and loan and failed in 1989.
James M. Fail was an American financial executive, the chairman of Stone Holdings, Inc. and Bluebonnet Savings Bank. A native of Mobile, Alabama, he attended Murphy High School and served for three years in the U.S. Navy. After graduating from the University of Alabama in 1949, he began his career as a securities salesman for Merrill Lynch. In the following decades, Fail and his holding companies have owned and operated a variety of investment, mortgage, banking, savings and loan, and insurance businesses throughout the U.S.
Bank United Corporation, headquartered in Houston, Texas, was a broad-based financial services provider and the largest publicly traded depository institution headquartered in Texas before its merger with Washington Mutual in 2001. Bank United Corp. conducted its business through its wholly owned subsidiary, Bank United, a federally chartered savings bank. The company operated a 155-branch community banking network in Texas, including 77 in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, 66 in the greater Houston area, five in Midland, four in Austin, and three in San Antonio; operated 19 SBA lending offices in 14 states; was a national middle market commercial bank with 23 regional offices in 16 states; originated mortgage loans through 11 wholesale offices in 10 states; operated a national mortgage servicing business serving approximately 324,000 customers, and managed an investment portfolio. As of June 30, 2000, Bank United Corp. had assets of $18.2 billion, deposits of $8.8 billion, and stockholder's equity of $823 million.
CenTrust Bank, A State Savings Bank was a Miami, Florida-based savings and loan. Its failure in 1990 was one of the largest and costliest failures of the savings and loan crisis.
American Savings and Loan Association was an American savings and loan based in Stockton, California. It was the largest thrift failure and the federal government's costliest resolution during the savings and loan crisis at an estimated cost of $5.4 billion.
HomeFed Bank was an American savings and loan association based in San Diego. It was founded by Charles K. Fletcher as Home Federal Savings and Loan Association in 1934 with $7,500, including $2,000 of his own and $7,500 from friends. At the time, new federal legislation in the Home Owners' Loan Corporation Act had created a new industry for mortgage finance. Home Federal's assets grew to $4 million within eight years. In 1983, it became a public company. It changed its name from Home Federal Savings and Loan to HomeFed Bank in 1989. That year, HomeFed achieved a company record $115.7 million in earnings.
Great American Bank was an American savings and loan association based in San Diego. It was founded in 1885 as San Diego Building and Loan Association, the first S&L in Southern California. Until the 1980s, it operated for decades as San Diego Federal Savings and Loan Association. Federal regulators seized and disbanded the bank in 1991. Before the company was split apart, Great American had 213 offices operating in California, Arizona, Washington, Montana, and Colorado.
