FDIC releases history of the 2008 financial crisis

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) released a report documenting the history of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, focusing on the agency’s response and lessons learned.

The report, called “Crisis and Response: An FDIC History, 2008–2013,” reviews how the FDIC dealt with two overlapping crises—the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009 and the banking crisis that ran from 2008 until 2013.

“This work is a valuable account of this extraordinary period in U.S. financial history and of the critical contributions made by the FDIC,” FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg said. “It will serve as a guidepost for future policymakers who will someday be called upon to respond to the next period of financial instability.”

The first part of the text looks at the origins of the crisis and examines the FDIC’s unprecedented use of emergency authorities to respond to financial market illiquidity and what were deemed systemically important financial institutions.

The second half of the documents how the FDIC responded to the challenges of carrying out its core missions of bank supervision, deposit insurance, and failed-bank resolution.

The report is available in its entirety on the FDIC’s website. A similar historical review was written after the banking and thrift crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s.