Theodor de Bry’s 1590 engraving of Secoton, from John White’s watercolors. Public domain.
In 1989 Congress created an agency to close failed savings and loans, and the public paid.
If money is tight, you did not make the bets, and the cleanup is still in the tax system you fund.
If you are in the middle, a failed hometown thrift becomes a federal file.
If you have savings, insurance held, and the cost moved from the thrift's owners to the country.
The Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 created the Resolution Trust Corporation.
Its job was to shut failed thrifts and sell what they owned.
The savings and loan crisis ended as a public cleanup, not as a private loss contained to the people who had taken the risk.
Source: Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989.