Right after we all talked over assignments for our latest This American Life hour, I started making calls. One hour later I had my head in my hands. Financial regulation is one of those things where the more you dig, the foggier the picture becomes. There are so many layers and it's really hard to separate the multiple moving parts.

The Office of Thrift Supervision stood out for a number of reasons, one biggie being that they regulated some of the largest failures of this crisis. Michael Roster, the regulation lawyer at the end of our story, had something to add this morning. He says that when you see the list of failures, yes, the OTS looks pretty bad. But imagine if all those "too big to fail" institutions were allowed to fail, instead of getting bailed out:

When looking at which regulatory agencies had failed banks under them, we should remember that the larger U.S. banks and holding companies are regulated by the Fed and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and, unlike entities under the OTS, were deemed too big to fail and thus were bailed out instead of being closed. But for that, I think you'd find the score is pretty even among all the agencies and, if anything, many of the larger failures in dollar amounts and number of entities are at these other agencies. Ironically, the Fed and the OCC have been vigorous advocates for the Basel II economic models, which would have reduced capital even further.

There's a cool list of failed banks here (scroll down and you can sort by regulator). As for the banks that have been propped up? We can spread out the blame a little:

Citigroup/Citibank
Holding Company Regulator: Federal Reserve
Bank regulator: Office of Comptroller of the Currency

Bank of America
Holding Company Regulator: Federal Reserve
Bank regulator: Office of Comptroller of the Currency

AIG
Holding Company Regulator: Office of Thrift Supervision
Bank regulator: Office of Thrift Supervision

categories: Inside 'Planet Money'

1:15 - June 8, 2009

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