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A former President George W. Bush administration official blasted Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg over his lack of experience in national politics, which she argues makes him underqualified for the Oval Office. Sheila Bair, the former chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), said Democrats are “almost maniacal in their eagerness to oust” President Trump and in doing so are less focussed on the qualifications of their candidates. “Enter Pete Buttigieg, whose primary asset seems to be a thin résumé,”Bair wrote in an op-ed published Wednesday in The Washington Post.

Sheila Bair, former FDIC Commission, and Barney Frank, former Congressman, penned a misleading op-ed in Fortune/CNN Money entitled “Watch out. The mortgage securities market is at it again“. Here is the misleading sentence: Big, ugly giants with names like Countrywide Financial and New Century packaged huge pools of mortgages, sliced them up into securities, and sold them to investors, who now bore the risk if the loans defaulted. It turns out that “big, ugly giants” with names like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did exactly the same thing. They packaged huge pools of mortgages, sliced them up into securities, and...

Time to Move Past Debate On Dodd-Frank Law: FDIC's Bair Published: Thursday, 13 Jan 2011 | 10:32 AM ET By: Michelle Lodge CNBC.com Writer Even with the Republicans in control of the House, major changes in the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law are unlikely and it's time for the country "to get on with it," Sheila Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, told CNBC Thursday. “Dodd-Frank gives the regulators a lot of tools to implement them [changes], and we are doing that in a balanced way,” said Bair, speaking from the Small Business Forum in Washington DC, a co-partnership...

The Federal Reserve was blamed by a fellow regulator for contributing to the financial crisis on Thursday as the central bank and one of its former chairmen fought back against congressional moves to curb its powers. In unusually pointed criticism, Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that “much of the crisis may have been prevented” had the Fed dealt with subprime mortgages seven years before it did. Regulators were wholly unprepared and ill-equipped for a systemic event,’ said Sheila Bair before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission In New York, Paul Volcker,...

MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) — The head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Monday said Congress needs to provide regulators greater tools to control the risky financial behavior that helped trigger the recession and to unwind major firms on the verge of collapse. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said she supports such a winding-down process for financial institutions other than banks. But she does have reservations with a proposal now before the House, which would cover the costs for the government of dissolving troubled companies with fees charged to businesses after the firms' meltdown occurred. Bair says that fund should be...

Tired of the government bailing out banks? Get ready for this: officials may soon ask banks to bail out the government. Senior regulators say they are seriously considering a plan to have the nation’s healthy banks lend billions of dollars to rescue the insurance fund that protects bank depositors. That would enable the fund, which is rapidly running out of money because of a wave of bank failures, to continue to rescue the sickest banks. The plan, strongly supported by bankers and their lobbyists, would be a major reversal of fortune. A hallmark of the financial crisis has been the...

FDIC Chief: Parts of Obama Plan Won't FlySheila Bair Says Congress Won't Approve Two Major Parts of Administration's Financial Overhaul WASHINGTON, Aug. 14, 2009 (AP) Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair is pushing back against key elements of the Obama administration's financial overhaul plan, saying they wouldn't survive in Congress and calling her own alternatives more viable. In an interview with The Associated Press, Bair said Congress won't approve two major parts of the package: Expanding the Federal Reserve's authority to regulate the largest financial companies and giving a proposed new consumer protection agency examination and enforcement powers over...

CRITICISM OVER FDIC RULES FOR PE BUYS OF BANKS-- FDIC boss Sheila Bair may have overstepped her authority with a proposal to limit how private-equity firms can snap up fallen banks. Banking agencies expressed concern about Bair's plan. The FDIC guarantees deposits---the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision regulate aspects of banking. [OCC chief] John Dugan said, "we are very concerned that the tone of the proposed guidelines would scare off private-equity money." The hope is that the rules will change before the formal vote which follows a 30-day comment period. John Douglas,...

IMPORTANT DEADLINE: for Washington Mutual Inc Shareholders July 6, 2009 SEATTLE, June 30 /PRNewswire/ -- All current shareholders of Washington Mutual should send letters to www.wamuequity.org to be received no later than July 6th 2009. These letters are very important to protect and/or enhance the future value of your Washington Mutual Stock. (WAMUQ WAHUQ WAMPQ WAMKQ). Do not delay in taking this important action on behalf of yourself and other Washington Mutual shareholders. Shareholders are urged to respond promptly via Toll Free FAX, e-mail or US Postal Mail, so that their signed letters arrive in our offices no later than...

Ending the idea that large financial institutions are “too big to fail” is a top priority under the Obama administration’s regulatory reform proposal, said Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. “Clearly, there has been moral hazard and lack of market discipline fed by the 'too big to fail' doctrine, and this in turn has been fed by the lack of resolution mechanism that really works for very large financial organizations and this has been a central focus of ours,” Bair said in an interview on CNBC. President Barack Obama's sweeping plan to reform financial regulation, which was...

Well, this is what happens when you screw over the FDIC and give all the fun regulatory powers to the Federal Reserve. Sheila Bair (who already has the reputation of not really being a team player) was on CNBC this morning (via Calculated Risk), talking about the new regulatory overhaul. Try telling us this sounds like someone ready to help push the new plan: Clearly, there has been moral hazard and lack of market discipline fed by the 'too big to fail' doctrine, and this in turn has been fed by the lack of resolution mechanism that really works for...

Two U.S. federal regulators who sounded early warnings on the financial crisis and a Liberian peace activist who helped end that nation's civil war were honored for their efforts Monday at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chairwoman Sheila Bair, former chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Brooksley Born, and peace activist Leymah Gbowee (LAY'-mah BOH'-wee) were presented with Profile in Courage Awards, annual honors named for a 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book written by John F. Kennedy. "(It's) a special honor to present the award to three women who have inspired all those who...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Federal Deposit Insurance Corp chairman Sheila Bair said some U.S. bank chief executives will be replaced in the next couple of months as regulators assess lenders' financial strength, Bloomberg News said on Friday, citing a television interview to be broadcast this weekend. "Management needs to be evaluated," Bair said on Bloomberg TV's program Political Capital with Al Hunt. "Have they been doing a good job? Are there people who can do a better job," Bair said. Asked about chief executives being replaced, Bair replied, "Yes," according to the report. In the last year, the federal government...

Last week, when the U.S. Treasury unveiled the basics of their lender “stress tests”, the Fed concluded that “most U.S. banking organizations currently have capital levels well in excess of the amounts required to be well capitalized.” Simultaneously, they also claimed that the banks needed more capital. Apparently the Fed has little understanding of irony. Why would our central bankers conclude that “well capitalized” banks need “more capital?” Quite possibly, they believe, as I do, that the rosy economic assumptions that form the basis of the “stress tests” may be far too optimistic. I believe that neither the Fed nor...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. policymakers must develop a way to handle the failure of a systemically important, financial conglomerate, possibly modeled after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp's procedure for smaller banks, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Tuesday. The FDIC has hinted it could take on that job, with Chairman Sheila Bair saying recently that the agency's model for failed banks works well. But she said the FDIC would need more authority and resources to resolve financial conglomerates. The FDIC insures about $4.5 trillion of deposits at more than 8,000 banks. It has the authority to take over an...

The Wall Street crowd that packed into the ballroom of the fancy Times Square hotel didn't know what was about to hit it. As the bankers and analysts sliced into their grilled beef tenderloin and chicken, Sheila Bair stepped up to the microphone and told them off. Too many people couldn't make their mortgage payments, she said. The mortgage industry was sitting on a ticking time bomb and just didn't get it. Pick up the phone, she said, and talk to borrowers. "The sense of hostility from that audience was overwhelming," said Howard Glaser, a Washington-based mortgage industry consultant who...

WASHINGTON, Dec 12 (Reuters) - A small bank in Georgia and another in Texas became the 24th and 25th banks to fail this year, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said on Friday. Haven Trust Bank of Duluth, Georgia, had total assets of $572 million and total deposits of $515 million as of Dec. 8, the FDIC said. BB&T Corp (BBT.N) agreed to acquire all of Haven's deposits. Haven's four branches will reopen on Monday as branches of BB&T, the FDIC said. The failure is expected to cost the bank regulator's deposit insurance fund about $200 million. The FDIC's fund has...

WASHINGTON -- Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair on Wednesday criticized the federal government for failing to take more aggressive steps to prevent Americans from losing their homes, highlighting a rift between her and other senior U.S. officials over terms of the $700 billion rescue package. The government plan will help stabilize financial markets but it doesn't do enough to address home foreclosures, the root of the crisis, she said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "Why there's been such a political focus on making sure we're not unduly helping borrowers but then we're providing all this...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Alpharetta, Georgia-based Integrity Bank has been closed by regulators and its assets have been transferred to Regions Financial Corp., Regions said in a prepared statement late Friday. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. assumed some $900 million in total deposits from Integrity and has transferred them to Regions (RF), Regions said, adding that, "the FDIC will retain most of Integrity Bank's loan portfolio for later disposition."Integrity's closure is the 10th bank failure so far this year. The bank had $1.1 billion in total assets and $974 million in total deposits as of June 30, the FDIC said.