From 1980 through 1991, some 3,000 banks and thrifts failed, including many of the largest in the country. The failed banks and thrifts had $650 billion of assets (roughly $3.5 trillion in terms relative to today's banking system) and cost the FDIC fund more than $100 billion, and taxpayers nearly $150 billion. It was an extremely difficult period, but the public's confidence in the banking system held, and financial panic was averted. Contrast this result with the global financial panic that hit in the fall of 2008 and threatened to push the world into an economic depression. The economy was actually quite strong in 2007 and 2008, unlike 1980-1982, so why did we experience such different outcomes in the financial markets?In Senseless Panic, William Isaac, who headed the FDIC during the financial crisis of the 1980s, describes what was different about the 2008 crisis that allowed the failure of a comparative handful of institutions to nearly shut down the worldwide financial system. Isaac, one of the foremost authorities on banking regulation, explains how we were able to navigate the treacherous economic and banking waters in the 1980s without creating a financial panic and why we failed to contain the less serious problems in 2008 that nearly sank the financial system. He identifies the policy mistakes over the two decades from 1990 to 2008 that led to the crisis of 2008 and the bungling of the crisis by top government leaders, such as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, which turned that crisis into a panic.Having lived through the banking and S&L crises of the 1980s, he examines the lessons we learned, and those we failed to learn, from that period and identifies the mistakes that led to what he calls the "Senseless Panic of 2008." It was a panic that would not have happened had our political leaders acquired even a passing knowledge of what happened during the 1980s and how we dealt with those enormous problems.Isaac shows how the banking and