Sheila C. Bair

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Sheila C. Bair
Sheila C. Bair
Incumbent
Assumed office 
June 26, 2006
Preceded by Donald E. Powell
Born April 3, 1954 (1954-04-03) (age 55)
Wichita, Kansas
Nationality United States
Political party Republican
Spouse Scott P. Cooper
Alma mater University of Kansas
Occupation Lawyer

Sheila Colleen Bair[1] (born April 3, 1954)[2] is the Chairman of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). She was appointed to the post for a five-year term on June 26, 2006 by George W. Bush. Bair will also serve as a member of the FDIC Board of Directors through July 2013. In 2008 Forbes ranked her as the second most powerful woman in the world behind German chancellor Angela Merkel. Forbes described her FDIC office as "the last stop for capital-starved banks (and their insured customers) before going under."[3]

Bair is a native of Independence, Kansas. Her father, Albert, was a surgeon. Her mother, Clara, was a nurse and a homemaker.[4] She received her bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas. In 1978, she received a J.D. from the University of Kansas School of Law.

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[edit] Career

Previous to her appointment at the FDIC, Bair was the Dean's Professor of Financial Regulatory Policy for the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a post she had held since 2002. She also served as Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the U.S. Department of the Treasury (2001 to 2002), Senior Vice President for Government Relations of the New York Stock Exchange (1995 to 2000), a Commissioner and Acting Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (1991 to 1995), and Research Director, Deputy Counsel and Counsel to Kansas Republican Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (1981 to 1988). While an academic, Bair also served on the FDIC's Advisory Committee on Banking Policy. Bair also pursued a seat in the U.S. Congress (she lost the 1990 Republican nomination in the 5th Kansas district by 760 votes to Dick Nichols).[5] Bair began her career in the General Counsel's office of the former US Department of Health, Education and Welfare.[6]

Bair has published two books for children: Rock, Brock and the Savings Shock (2006) and Isabel's Car Wash (2008). Both titles show children good examples of money management.

Bair is married to Scott P. Cooper and has two children, Preston and Colleen.

[edit] 2008 financial crisis

Bair has played a key role in the management of the 2008 financial crisis. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, Bair was one of the first government officials to recognize the problem of subprime loans. At a conference in October 2007, she told investors: "More needs to be done, and done sooner rather than later," to restructure mortgages for troubled homeowners. Bair assumed a prominent role in the Bush administration's response to the crisis, including successfully pressing for a provision in the federal government's financial rescue bill that temporarily raised the cap on FDIC insured deposits to US$250,000 per account (although this was not made retroactive to include depositors of IndyMac Bank which had failed just 90 days beforehand). She also used regulatory powers to temporarily guarantee bank debt and insure all non-interest bearing deposits to an unlimited amount. Additionally, Bair worked with the Treasury Department to inject capital into the country's largest financial institutions.[7]

On July 14, 2008, Bair temporarily halted all of the foreclosures on bank-owned loans in the portfolio of IndyMac Bank. IndyMac, which failed on July 11, 2008 and thereupon was taken over by the FDIC, was a home-loan specialist and serviced roughly $200 billion in mortgages. A subset of that portfolio – roughly $15 billion of loans – was owned by IndyMac, not investors, giving the FDIC much more flexibility to immediately intervene. Mrs. Bair said FDIC officials were looking at all of the other homes in the foreclosure process serviced by IndyMac to see if there is a way to help homeowners avoid losing their home. The move was consistent with Ms. Bair’s longstanding push to have mortgage servicers cut a break for struggling homeowners.[8]

Chairman Bair also oversaw the attempted acquisition of Wachovia by Citigroup, which was later nullified by the acquisition of Wachovia by Wells Fargo and the actual acquisition of Washington Mutual, the largest failed bank in history, by JP Morgan Chase.[9] As to the aborted Wachovia-Citigroup acquisition, on October 2, 2008, Wachovia President and CEO Robert Steel received an unexpected call from Bair indicating that Wells Fargo was prepared to make a buy-out offer for Wachovia. Bair encouraged Steel to “give serious consideration to (the) offer,” despite the fact that Wachovia had only days earlier entered into a non binding agreement in principle to sell its banking operations to Citigroup for $2.2 billion.[10]

Bair publicly criticized the Bush Administration's $700 billion bailout package, saying it will not do enough to help Americans facing foreclosures. Bair told the Wall Street Journal "[W]e're attacking it at the [financial] institution level as opposed to the borrower level, and it's the borrowers defaulting. That is what's causing the distress at the institution level," she said. "So why not tackle the borrower problem?"[11] On Friday, November 14, 2008 Bair released details of her much more ambitious plan – a $24.4-billion program aimed at preventing 1.5 million foreclosures – even though Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson had told reporters earlier in the week that he would not pay for it.[7]

In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News on March 15, 2009, (see minutes and seconds 3:54-3:49) she said, "Right now 98 percent of the banks representing 98 percent of the banking assets exceed regulatory standards for being well capitalized."[12]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "Presidential Nomination: Sheila Colleen Bair". The White House website via Archives.gov. 2006-05-01. http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/nominations/60.html. Retrieved on 2009-03-08. 
  2. ^ Howard, Theresa (2008-10-03). "FDIC's Bair emerges as key player in bank rescues". USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/regulation/2008-10-02-fdic-bair_N.htm. 
  3. ^ Forbes Most Powerful Women #2 Shelia C. Bair
  4. ^ Ziebel, Alan (January 31, 2009). "Sheila Bair shakes up Washington, Wall Street". Associated Press. http://www.examiner.com/a-1826962~Sheila_Bair_shakes_up_Washington__Wall_Street.html. Retrieved on 02-01-2009. 
  5. ^ Cope, Debra; James Swann (October 2006). "Full plate, Open mind: Meet FDIC chairman Sheila Bair". Community Banker. http://74.125.113.104/search?q=cache:OrCQNKdeuckJ:findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5344/is_200610/ai_n21400831+%22sheila+bair%22+dole+kansas&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&gl=us. Retrieved on 02-01-2009. 
  6. ^ http://www.fdic.gov/news/conferences/TUM_bio.html
  7. ^ a b Puzzanghera, Jim (18 November 2008). "FDIC chief Sheila Bair could have role on Obama team". Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-bair18. Retrieved on 2009-05-07. 
  8. ^ http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/07/14/fdics-bair-halts-some-foreclosures-in-indymac-portfolio/
  9. ^ Kudlow, Larry. Our Bair Necessity, National Review, September 30, 2008.
  10. ^ http://milwaukee.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/stories/2008/10/20/story4.html
  11. ^ http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/10/16/mortgage_fix/
  12. ^ http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?maven_referralObject=3820280&maven_referralPlaylistId=&sRevUrl=http://www.foxnews.com/fns/

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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