Savings and loans banks of America were essentially small local banks that provided home loans and took savings deposits like British building societies. However in the greedy 1980s they ventured into the choppier, mainstream financial waters of large sums to compete with the big US banks.

However without the major banks' expertise they soon went under. A quarter of US Savings and Loans banks crashed. Luckily for investors the federal government insured many of the individual deposits - however this was unlucky for the bank as it now faced a huge liability bailout sum of $150 billion.