The Congress and the regulators responded forcefully with the Federal Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA) in 1989, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act (FDICIA) in 1991. These legislative initiatives restricted banking practices, limited the supervisors' discretion in dealing with weak banks, imposed new regulatory requirements--including prompt corrective action--and strengthened supervisory oversight overall.
Beyond the bank and thrift crisis in this country, there were also indications that banks of other nations followed different norms of capital adequacy, which had implications for competitive equity and for the overall soundness of the global banking system. The G-10 nations responded with the Basel Accord, a single, fairly simple global standard that was implemented in the early 1990s.