14 The Solari Report / 2018 Annual Wrap Up / Part Two III. Assistant Secretary of Housing-Federal Housing Commissioner, U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development, Bush I (April 1989–August 1990) “You can’t go to HUD—HUD is a sewer.” ~ Nicholas F. Brady, Secretary of the Treasury, Bush I to Catherine, 1989 T he first Bush administration began at the end of a housing and mortgage bubble during the 1980s that was marked by significant financial fraud—all of which contributed to the collapse of the savings and loan (S&L) industry. The U.S. Treasury, under the leadership of now Secretary of Treasury Nick Brady, worked with Congress to pass the Federal Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIR- REA), which created the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) to resolve failed savings and loan institutions and related housing and mortgage portfolios and fraud. Of the 3,234 savings and loan associations in the U.S., 1,043 (32%) failed between 1986 and 1995. During this period, the financial controls in the federal mortgage credit programs were overridden, causing a signif- icant influx of defaulted mortgages and foreclosed assets. This included the largest federal mort- gage insurance operations in the federal government, the FHA at HUD. Until the creation of the RTC, the FHA had the largest property disposition operation in the country. I arrived in Washington in April, 1989. I described my responsibilities as Assistant Secretary of Housing in Dillon Read & Co., Inc. & the Aristocracy of Stock Profits: