The FDIC, and How Soon We Forget

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By John Tamny, RealClearMarkets

Chairman Henry Gonzalez (D-Texas) and his committee are taking us back to 1980, when former Chairman Fernand St. Germain boosted deposit insurance to $100,000 an account (from $40,000) in the dead of night. To prevent another S&L disaster, we need to limit the deposit-insurance subsidy. A banking ‘reform’ without such limits is just another Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue."

The above passage comes from a Wall Street Journal editorial dated June 7, 1991. Amid an S&L meltdown that some deemed "the worst public scandal in American history", the Journal’s editorial page was properly relentless in its pursuit of the main causes of the S&L crisis that like banking problems today, would fall at the feet of the American taxpayer

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