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The savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s (commonly dubbed the S&L crisis) was the failure of 1,043 out of the 3,234 savings and loan associations in the United States from 1986 to 1995: the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) closed or otherwise resolved 296 institutions from 1986 to 1989 and the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) closed or otherwise resolved 747 institutions from 1989 to 1995.〔Curry, T., & Shibut, L. (2000). The Cost of the Savings and Loan Crisis. FDIC Banking Review, 13(2), 26-35.〕 A savings and loan or "thrift" is a financial institution that accepts savings deposits and makes mortgage, car and other personal loans to individual members (a cooperative venture known in the United Kingdom as a building society). By 1995, the RTC had closed 747 failed institutions nationwide, worth a total possible book value of between $402 and $407 billion. In 1996, the General Accounting Office estimated the total cost to be $160 billion, including $132.1 billion taken from taxpayers.〔Wilentz, Sean. ''The Age of Reagan'', p. 199. ISBN 978-0-06-074481-6〕 The FSLIC and RTC were created to resolve the S&L crisis. In 1979, the Federal Reserve System of the United States doubled interest rates that it charges its member banks in an effort to reduce inflation. The building or savings and loans associations (S&Ls) had issued long-term loans at fixed interest rates that were lower than the interest rate at which they could borrow. In addition, the S&Ls had the liability of the deposits which paid higher interest rates than the rate at which they could borrow. When interest rates at which they could borrow increased, the S&Ls could not attract adequate capital, from deposits to savings accounts of members for instance, they became insolvent. Rather than admit to insolvency, lax regulatory oversight allowed some S&Ls to invest in highly speculative investment strategies. This had the effect of extending the period where S&Ls were likely technically insolvent. These adverse actions also substantially increased the economic losses for the S&Ls than would otherwise have been realized had their insolvency been discovered earlier.〔Black (2005, p. 5)〕 One extreme example was that of financier Charles Keating, who paid $51 million financed through Michael Milken's "junk bond" operation, for his Lincoln Savings and Loan Association which at the time had a negative net worth exceeding $100 million.〔Black (2005, pp. 64–65)〕 Others, such as author/financial historian Kenneth J. Robinson or the account of the crisis published in 2000 by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), give multiple reasons as to why the Savings and Loan Crisis came to pass.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=https://www.fdic.gov/bank/historical/history/167_188.pdf )〕 In no particular order of significance, they identify the rising monetary inflation beginning in the late 1960s spurred by simultaneous domestic spending programs of President Lyndon B. Johnson's "Great Society" programs coupled with the military expenses of the continuing Vietnam War that continued into the late 1970s. The efforts to end rampant inflation of the late 1970s and early 1980s by raising interest rates brought on recession in the early 1980s and the beginning of the S&L crisis. Deregulation of the S&L industry, combined with regulatory forbearance, and fraud worsened the crisis.〔Robinson, K. J. (2013). The Savings and Loan Crisis. Federalreservehistory.org. Retrieved from http://www.federalreservehistory.org/Events/DetailView/42〕 ==Background== The "thrift" or "building" or "savings and loans associations" industry has its origins in the British building society movement that emerged in the late 18th century. American thrifts (known then as "building and loans" or "B&Ls") shared many of the same basic goals: to help the working class save for the future and purchase homes. Thrifts were not-for-profit cooperative organizations that were typically managed by the membership and local institutions that served well-defined groups of aspiring homeowners. While banks offered a wide array of products to individuals and businesses, thrifts often made only home mortgages primarily to working-class men and women. Thrift leaders believed they were part of a broader social reform effort and not a financial industry. According to thrift leaders, B&Ls not only helped people become better citizens by making it easier to buy a home, they also taught the habits of systematic savings and mutual cooperation which strengthened personal morals. The first thrift was formed in 1831, and for 40 years there were few B&Ls, found in only a handful of Midwestern and Eastern states. This situation changed in the late 19th century as urban growth and the demand for housing related to the Second Industrial Revolution caused the number of thrifts to explode. The popularity of B&Ls led to the creation of a new type of thrift in the 1880s called the "national" B&L. The "nationals" were often for-profit businesses formed by bankers or industrialists that employed promoters to form local branches to sell shares to prospective members. The "nationals" promised to pay savings rates up to four times greater than any other financial institution. The Depression of 1893 (resulting from the financial Panic of 1893, which lasted for several years) caused a sharp decline in members, and so "nationals" experienced a sudden reversal of fortunes. Because a steady stream of new members was critical for a "national" to pay both the interest on savings and the hefty salaries for the organizers, the falloff in payments caused dozens of "nationals" to fail. By the end of the 19th century, nearly all the "nationals" were out of business (National Building and Loans Crisis). This led to the creation of the first state regulations governing B&Ls, to make thrift operations more uniform, and the formation of a national trade association to not only protect B&L interests, but also promote business growth. The trade association led efforts to create more uniform accounting, appraisal, and lending procedures. It also spearheaded the drive to have all thrifts refer to themselves as "savings and loans", not B&Ls, and to convince managers of the need to assume more professional roles as financiers.〔 In the 20th century, the two decades that followed the end of World War II were the most successful period in the history of the thrift industry. The return of millions of servicemen eager to take up their prewar lives led to an unprecedented post-war housing crisis and boom with a dramatic increase in new families, and this so-called "baby boom" caused a surge in new mostly suburban home construction, and vast expansion beyond the central core cities with additional commercial development on radiating spoke roads and highways plus the additional construction by 1956, during the Eisenhower administration of the Interstate Highways system throughout the country allowed the explosion of suburban communities in formerly rural surrounding counties. By the 1940s S&Ls (the name change for many associations occurred gradually after the late 1930s) provided most of the financing for this expansion, which now had some sort of state regulation which predated the later similar regulation of banks instituted after the 1929 Stock Market "Crash" and the later "bank holiday" of the beginning of the administration of 32nd President Franklin D. Roosevelt in March 1933, and the subsequent requirements and regulations in the "New Deal" programs to combat the Great Depression. The result was strong industry expansion that lasted through the early 1960s. An important trend involved raising rates paid on savings to lure deposits, a practice that resulted in periodic rate wars between thrifts and even commercial banks. These wars became so severe that in 1966, the United States Congress took the highly unusual move of setting limits on savings rates for both commercial banks and S&Ls. From 1966 to 1979, the enactment of rate controls presented thrifts with a number of unprecedented challenges, chief of which was finding ways to continue to expand in an economy characterized by slow growth, high interest rates and inflation. These conditions, which came to be known as stagflation, wreaked havoc with thrift finances for a variety of reasons. Because regulators controlled the rates that thrifts could pay on savings, when interest rates rose depositors often withdrew their funds and placed them in accounts that earned market rates, a process known as disintermediation. At the same time, rising loan rates and a slow growth economy made it harder for people to qualify for mortgages that in turn limited the ability of the S&Ls to generate income .〔 In response to these complex economic conditions, thrift managers resorted to several innovations, such as alternative mortgage instruments and interest-bearing checking accounts, as a way to retain funds and generate lending business. Such actions allowed the industry to continue to record steady asset growth and profitability during the 1970s even though the actual number of thrifts was falling. Despite such growth, there were still clear signs that the industry was chafing under the constraints of regulation. This was especially true with the large S&Ls in the western United States that yearned for additional lending powers to ensure continued growth. Despite several efforts to modernize these laws in the 1970s, few substantive changes were enacted.〔 In 1979, the financial health of the thrift industry was again challenged by a return of high interest rates and inflation, sparked this time by a doubling of oil prices and exacerbated by dwindling resources of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC)〔 It was not a small problem: In 1980 there were more than 4,000 savings & loans institutions with assets of $600 billion, of which $480 billion were mortgage loans, many of them made at low interest rates fixed in an earlier era. In the United States, this was 50 percent of the entire home mortgage market.〔 In 1983, the FSLIC's reserves for failures amounted to around $6 billion, whereas, according to Robinson (footnoted), the cost of paying off insured depositors in failed institutions would have been around $25 billion.〔 Hence, regulators were forced into "forbearance"—allowing insolvent institutions to remain open—and to hope that they could grow out of their problems. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Savings and loan crisis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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