Mullins left the government service to join the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management and remained in private finance following its collapse in 1998.

[5] In two months, Mullins helped assemble nearly 50 people to produce the report, which provided the first official record of what caused the crash and offered recommendations on how to fix the deficiencies in the market.

The plan was enacted by Congress on August 8, 1989, as FIRREA (The Financial Institutions Reform Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989) which created the RTC to dispose of failed thrift assets.

[11][12] On May 21, 1990, Bush nominated Mullins to a 14-year term on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors to fill a vacancy left by the resignation of H. Robert Heller.

[16][17] At LTCM, Mullins joined what Business Week termed a "dream team" of financial experts and academics, including Nobel laureates Myron Scholes and Robert C.

[18] Roger Lowenstein, author of When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management, argued that some prospective investors in LTCM were swayed by the presence of Mullins.

[7] Just as the celebrity of Scholes and Merton caused investors and trading partners to exercise less diligence, Mullins' addition as a "marquee" name added gravitas to the firm.