In a hackle-raising expose of the S & L scandal, Day, who covered this financial disaster for the Washington Post , estimates that the debacle not only will cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion but will force the administration to nationalize the nation's thrifts. With a masterly grasp of her complex subject, she traces the scandal from an Ohio thrift's collapse in 1985 to the workings of the global banking system, and defines the roles that financial, political and criminal individuals or groups knowingly or unknowingly played following the Reagan era's thrift deregulation policies, which provided a "license to gamble," especially in risky real estate loans. Day records that it was not until late 1991 that the Bush administration publicly recognized that the taxpayers would have to foot the bill for the S & L "cleanup," a program of closing, seizing, and selling the $500 billion assets of failed trusts. So far, only a pittance has been recovered through legal prosecution of the guilty.