Let's see ....
I remember a whole industry, structurally noncompetitive, that depended utterly on Regulation Q (federal interest rate controls and the S&L differential) for survival.
I remember Jimmuh, double digit inflation, and massive disintermediation.
I remember financial deregulation that told S&L's that they either had to turn themselves into commercial banks or go out of business.
I remember tax reform that retroactively eliminated theretofore perfectly legitimate tax shelters, led to a massive writedown of affected assets, and arbitrarily pushed hundreds of S&L's into mortal difficulty.
And I remember grandstanding pols that, rather than admit the S&L fiasco was mainly a product of policy mistakes, ran wild on a witch hunt.
Sure, there were a few bad apples in the S&L barrel -- Jim McDougall, Bill & Hil come to mind, and there were others -- but mainly what we had was the collapse of a 1930's-style, government organized cartel that couldn't survive in a competitive world. A very expensive collapse, to be sure. What happened with the S&Ls was akin to what happened to the Soviet economy across the board. If a scapegoat was needed for public consumption, the proper course would have been to dig up Franklin Roosevelt, chop off his head, and parade it around on a pike.
I remember it vividly. Do you know the real cause?
It was not caused by "greedy" S&Ls, or even financial mistakes they made. It was casued by congress changing the IRS code.
Before the crisis, real estate losses were entirely tax-deductable. This meant that anyone, no matter how wealthy could buy an apartment complex for a high price and deduct both depreciation and mortgage interest from income. If depreciation and interest were higher than income from rents this deduction was carried over to be applied against other income.
The practical meaning of this is that high-income investors were willing to pay more for real estate because of the tax benefit.
Well, congress saw fit to change this so that losses greater than $25,000 could not be carried over to ofset other income, and even the $25,000 was phased out as your AGI rose to either $125k or $150k.
All of a sudden, a building which generated a hefty tax deduction didn't anymore. The economics changed and the price people were willing to pay for a building dropped substantially as a result.
This was a government-generated problem.