An examination of the savings and loan crisis and subsequent bailout reveals that the welfare state is a dynamic process: the bailout is an extension of a larger process of state projects for economic intervention that began with banking regulation following the Great Depression of the 1930s, and continued with the Chrysler bailout legislation in 1979 and the Garn-St. Germain Act of 1982, which deregulated the banking industry.

In viewing the welfare state as a power process involving shifts in relative emphases on corporate and social welfare policies and expenditures, this book provides both central case studies and a new conceptual framework for policy debates on "welfare as we know it."