The S&L crisis was caused by misdeeds by the S&L industry.
The current crisis is caused by the US Government enacting and enforcing legislation that explicitly forced bankers to ignore their legals and fiduciary duty to protect the deposits of their customers by only lending money to people who were good credit risks, who could pay back the loans and to properly collateralize the loans to losses in the event of a default.
Instead the US Government forced bankers to make to loans to people who were horrible credit risks, who had no demonstrable way to pay back the money lent to them and to waive the requirement that the loans be have sufficient down payment to collateralize the loans to protect against losses.
The Banker have all of this well documented to protect themselves when the whole system imploded.
Much of Congress should be going to jail for what they have done to our country, along with any Banker who abused the system
The way you are spinning it is Congress made banks do liar loans. Hate to say this nowhere in the CRA regs gave bankers the authority to do this. Where in the CRA can banks claim that the liar loans are AAA paper and sold as such in perspectives to investors. That is a violation of SEC laws. I recommend you search William Black on youtube. He was the regulator that closed hundreds of S&L in the 1980’s. In his opinion the bankers are repeating the same scams as the S&L. The big Wall Street banks repeated the same crimes as the S&L’s, Enron, Junk Bonds, Vesco, etc, etc. The same pattern, exploit federal inactions on existing regs, create a bubble with high leverage, and pull out before the bubble bursts and the gov regulators figure what had happen. In the past the schemers were caught and punished but many still got off lightly to repeat the same damage over and over and over. MF Global is only the first of many where customer accounts are used as collateral for buying foreign sovereign bonds, then the firm will owe money to the big five Wall Street banks who will serve as members of the bankruptcy trustee board when the firm implodes. As trustees and creditors to the firm, customer accounts will be seized as assets for creditors, and the big five banks will make sure their loans are paid first while the customer is last. In the past that never happen but Congress and the Wall Street bankers in the name of global competitive advantage and maximum ability to raise cash did away with these customer protections. Americans are still asleep on what the ramification of MF Global scandal means to them. Maybe they will wake up when a major Wall Street bank implodes and a million Americans find their 401k, mutual funds, stock cash accounts frozen or seized by the big banks for their losses while the US gov sits and does nothing. One percent tells America they produce jobs, their past performance has destroyed 11 million American jobs just from them scheming with paper on Wall Street. They keep behaving this way there will be revolution and many of the 1 percent will be hanging from the nearest tree of justice.