Free Custom «The Savings and Loan Crisis» Essay Paper

Early in April 1992, reports from major economic scholars warned that over the decades the country had gone through hard times and learned a lot concerning the limits to deregulation. The savings and loan crisis at the time was one exhibit calling forth that the Deregulation was a risk because it also brought in an effect as the savings and loan disaster demonstrated earlier on. Deregulation, together with the Reagan administration's failure to enforce set rules led to the huge costs of cleaning up the ruins of the failed S&L industry. From such analysis, it is evident that the S&L fiasco still has to be misdiagnosed. Regrettably, this misdiagnosis application features mostly in the ailing banking industry. However, there are other circumstances where it relates to an introduction into the insurance market among other compounded industrial problems. Failure to take care and being careful regarding the S&L roots could bring in more problems to the taxpayers leading to a face of more crises in the financial industry (Kane, 1989).

 

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Catherine (1993) an economic consultant in the state of Alexandria, Virginia and an economic professor at American University looks back into the savings and loan crisis in the early 1960s. She together with other scholars sought to analyze the scandal and the impact as well as consequences emanating from the crisis within the country’s economic system. She features major lessons from the crisis analyzing the situation at hand also what the future holds for the country. Great lessons emanated from the S&L experience a yield of three very important lessons. First, strict regulation was the preliminary cause of the problems in the industry. Then, federal deposit insurance ultimately took the responsibility for the extreme high costs of the debacle. In the end, efforts from the government to protect the industry at play only invited more abuses and led to an increase in the restructuring costs (Catherine, 1993).

Since the exit of the depression through the early 1960s, the S&L industry was a representation of an important cog in the efforts of the W.S. government aimed at promoting home ownership, but the individual S&L operation was pretty cut -and-dried. The law required the S&L to gather the household savings in short-term deposits and make investments of the savings in fixed-rate mortgages of a thirty-year period.

Caught in a vise between rising costs and stagnant incomes, the S&L capital eroded. By 1980, preliminary to the deregulation taking place, the S&L industry liabilities exceeded its assets by approximately $1 10 billion. The industry was by now insolvent-its staunch members owed the industry more than when the Carter administration and Congress enacted the Monetary Control Act and the Depository Institutions Deregulation (Barth, 1991).

A great lesson comes from the "interest rate risk" in S&L operations. It causes an alarm over the current situation in the country. With stable interest rates taking place over long periods, lending long and borrowing short proves profitable because the rates of interest on long-term contracts are actually higher than the short-term instruments. However, risks of such strategies remain a threat comparing to the situation earlier in the event of S&L.

The situation was worse by then with inflationary expectations becoming more prevalent during the period. The rates became more volatile and followed a relative upward trend. Increased economic uncertainty and the rising interest costs increased the depression in the housing market. Homeowners would keep their houses longer. First-time homebuyers also had a share since they delayed purchases. Meanwhile, the S&L industry faced severe funding problems. The depositor’s rates of S&L were controlled. The ceilings of interest rate were a design to protect the S&L from the exploitative and high funding costs.

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What are some of the Resuscitation Efforts for the crisis?

Policymakers put major focus on the symptoms of the dilapidating S&L industry. To address these major problems resulting from a portfolio full of fixed-rate assets, long-term assets, the administration and the Congress sought to make an offer for the S&L adding investment opportunities. Because of this, they allowed adjustable rate mortgages. The 1980 legislation and the Depository Institutions Act expanded acceptable investments in the S&L industry permitting them to access short-term consumer loans, commercial real estate loans, issue credit cards, among other crucial things. Policymakers were doing this hoping that broader powers would also be on the front line to allow S&L diversify their portfolios helping in the increase of short-term earnings and lower their vulnerability to future economic instability (Barth, 1991).

The Policymakers also addressed the funding problems in the S&L. They initiated the legislation of a six-year phase out making it possible for deposit interest rate ceilings and encouraging the new development of instruments in longer-term savings. They also had a expanding the coverage of the federal deposit insurance from exactly $40,000 per account to an average of $100,000 per account (Kane, 1989).

In the case of the application of these policies, it was logical to have expectations that greater freedom was enough to enable S&L owners improve their at hand financial health. Unfortunately, these policymakers did overlook a very crucial step of recapitalization.

What is the importance of capitalization?

At the dawn of the crisis, hundreds of S&L became insolvent. Unlike other businesses creditors, the de-capitalized S&L primary private creditors continued in the provision of funding. Federal deposit insurance was protecting the S&L depositors from major losses. They made the respective federal government the main creditor of last resort for respective weak institutions. The federal government did not act like how a private creditor would act. Financial support from the Government continued provision through continued deposit insurance and subsidized loans. The S&L owners with none of their money at risk got broad new powers and easy access to an unlimited source of these funds. The approach results were exdisastrous. That left capitalization as the only way of salvaging the situation and maintaining the operations of the existent organizations (Barth, 1991).

Healthy S&L problems were not over with higher costs of funds and higher premiums. When federal regulators were in place to deal with insolvent institutions, they did not even close them. Instead, they would remove what they termed as bad assets and inject capital preliminary to selling the S&L to interested new investors. S&L executives who were able to thrive in this period of worst pitfalls in the crisis found themselves again competing against other counterparts revitalized by the input of government monies. This engulfed more problems to the S&L industry bringing in more hustles and a burden within the field that was hard to bear for some investors.

Where did the government fail?

Despite legislation aiding the S&L, most officials of the government continued denying that there was a major problem. The FSLIC did not receive any injection of an amount of additional funds for quite sometime, and to make it worse, the monies were extremely inadequate. Furthermore, the Banking Act of Competitive Equality contained plain forbearance language that required regulators to leave open respective institutions whose problems were because of economic events that were beyond the control of the management. This was a problem because many policy makes did not set to experience a disaster worth $200 billion as it happened (Catherine, 1993).

What are some of the big lessons from these crises?

The S&L crisis lessons have important implications especially for ongoing policy debates in cases where insurance companies, banks, and other important financial institutions are involved. The first lesson is to learn that the S&L industry initial problems emanated overregulation. The crisis in the industry was an outgrowth of strict federal regulation defining the basic conditions of operations for the S&L industry. This deterred many private institutions from attempting to experiment with ways to adapt especially to changing the existent market conditions.

There was another crucial lesson from the crisis in the S&L industry.  George Kaufman observed recently that, deregulation is effective only in enhancing efficiency if the government discipline reduction is replaced by a relative market discipline increase. When these crisis shot up, the market discipline was extremely low. It was not a worry for the depositors and owners because they felt they could loose nothing therefore encouraging escalating risk-taking.

Another major lesson was that the S&L crisis was by no chance a cops-and-robbers predicament. This was juts a mishandled restructuring problem in the industry. When the government enhances commitment to subsidizing and protecting specific industry for "the social good," the existent policy-makers often ignore and override market signals therefore leading to the failure of such efforts. The fact remains that the S&L crisis cost the country dearly.