The Savings and Loans Crisis: Lessons from a Regulatory Failure. Edited by James R. Barth, Susan Trimbath and Glenn Yago.

It is an interesting fact that, as this excellent account shows, China's rotten banking system should have so many things in common with America's Savings and Loans crisis. In the 1980s, the world's most sophisticated financial market place went through some terrible regulatory mishaps and a $150 billion bailout before the losses from savings and loans sector were staunched.