This book describes the period of failures of savings and loan associations and sets out a program of policies to prevent future debacles. It explains the regulatory actions, and inactions, that created the incentives for large numbers of thrifts to make excessively risky and ill-conceived - and in some cases, fraudulent and criminal - investments. It describes the failure of the accounting system to provide adequate information to regulators (and, in many cases, even to the managers of the thrifts themselves) concerning the health and riskiness of individual thrifts. It also discusses how the regulatory system that had been conceived in an earlier and highly regulated era was overwhelmed in the deregulated environment of the early 1980s. It shows how the reforms that were made in response to the growing crisis were too little and too late. And, finally, it offers a set of policy reforms that could prevent future crises in the savings and loan industry. This work should be of interest to political and financial economists.