Horseradish. After inflation, the S&L bailout of the '80's was bigger than the current one.
Bad memories are easy to forget.
One of the biggest to fall happened in fall 1982. Southern Industrial Banking Corp a S&L uninsured. People lost entire life savings. The other was United American Bank of Tennessee FDIC insured. The first ran by CH Butcher Jr the second by brother Jake Butcher. They cooked the books between the two institutes and dummy corporations. this was also the scandal Harold Ford Sr was linked to.
The S&L meltdown came later...after regulations were relaxed-the late 80’s and early 90’s. I was there, but if you were not...google is your friend.
Savings and Loan Associations
For decades, savings and loan associations, also known as S&L’s or thrifts, had been staples of the American economic landscape — solid if unexciting institutions whose major business was making mortgage loans within their community. But in what became known as the S&L crisis of the late 1980’s, hundreds of thrifts made a torrent of bad loans, ending in a government takeover and bailout that ultimately cost taxpayers over $120 billion.
In the 1960’s, the government capped the interest rates that thrifts could offer on their federally guaranteed accounts. When interest rates soared in the early 1980’s, the thrifts faced such difficulty in attracting money that the caps were removed. At the same time, some states relaxed the limits on the kinds of investments thrifts could make.
A new breed of aggressive S&L’s emerged, that attracted large pools of deposits by offering higher returns, and then used this cash to move into new lines of business, including junk bonds and real estate development.
The cost of the S&L mess was about 123 billion. We gave more money than that to AIG...not to mention what the fed has spent. Even adjusting for inflation...this is the most expensive mess in the history of our country.