Even fans of the American banking sys-tem in its present shape admit that no one would have designed it that way from scratch: it simply grew, like the entire American nation, out of Wild West pioneering, revolution, retrospective fixing and constant tension between individual states and the centre. The overall guardian of the financial system is the Federal Reserve, but big banks can choose whether they are regulated by state charter, which means they are supervised by one of 54 state banking departments (including those of Guam and the Virgin Islands), or by national charter, with oversight by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (occ). Smaller state-chartered banks that are not important enough to be members of the Federal Reserve system, and institutions such as savings banks and industrial loan corporations, are supervised by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Other kinds of savings banks, known as thrifts, come under the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS). Credit unions are supervised by the National Credit Union Administration.
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