The Government Corporation Control Act of 1945

The government corporation, by reason of its use as an instrument for administering commercial and emergency programs in two world wars and one depression, has become a familiar device in American government. A recent census turned up some 115 federal corporate agencies, with over 20 billion dollars in assets. Admittedly, not all of these were government corporations “in the strictest sense of the term,†and some have since been liquidated with the ending of the war. More than half of the total of 115, moreover, are attributable to the fact that the federal land banks, intermediate credit banks, banks for coöperatives, production-credit corporations, and home loan banks are organized on a regional basis, with twelve individual corporations in each category. Nevertheless, the list is an impressive one, including such permanent major federal agencies as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Panama Railroad Company, the Inland Waterways Corporation, the Export-Import Bank, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Public Housing Authority, and the Farm Credit Administration system.