Global Definitions Database

A temporary federal agency established to act as a receiver for insolvent federal savings and loan associations and to transfer or liquidate those associations' assets; created by Congress in the wake of the 1980s savings and loan crisis, in which hundreds of depository institutions slipped into insolvency due to unsound banking practices; established in August 1989, when the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA) was signed into law; under its mandate, placed closed failed financial institutions placed in conservatorship by selling or merging troubled thrifts and folding their assets back into the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC); shuttered a total of 747 failed financial institutions, with total assets of $394 billion.