During the 1980s, banks and thrift institutions failed at a rate the United States has not experienced since the Great Depression. Deposits at most of these institutions were insured by the federal government, and covering the insurance liabilities has required hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer funds. The crisis in the banking and thrift industry has led to a reexamination of the federal deposit insurance system. This article is a collection of six essays on deposit insurance and the federal government’s role in providing it. Each author is an academic or a Federal Reserve economist who has published research on deposit insurance and related topics. Steven Russell edited the collection. The essays in the collection express a variety of different views on a broad range of important questions: Does the protection provided by deposit insurance encourage financial institutions to take excessive risks that cause them to fail? Should the federal deposit insurance system simply be abolished? Would abolishing the insurance system bring about a return of the problems of financial instability that existed before the system was established? Can we reform federal deposit insurance in a way that makes the financial system stable and competitive without encouraging risk taking and imposing large costs on taxpayers? If so, how should we go about it?