"FDIC chief wants an agency for risk monitoring; Stresses need for oversight of large firms" by Alison Vekshin, Bloomberg News | May 8, 2009
CHICAGO - Sheila Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., yesterday urged Congress to create a US authority to unwind failing "systemically important" firms and avoid bailouts for companies whose collapse would disrupt the financial system.
"Lack of an effective resolution mechanism for large financial organizations is driving many of our policy choices," Bair said yesterday at a Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago conference. "It has contributed to unprecedented government intervention into private companies. We need a new resolution regime that minimizes the economic impact of the failure of a large, complex financial institution."
Bair is seeking new powers to seize the holding companies of US lenders, expanding her agency's authority to close the banks and savings and loans that take deposits and make loans. Such power would let the agency shield taxpayers from losses when government steps in to prevent companies from failing and disrupting the financial system, she said last week.
It sounds good; then why do I not trust them or the MSM bringing me the report?
Bair urged lawmakers to give her agency the authority while testifying to a Senate Banking Committee hearing yesterday as Congress prepares to write legislation overhauling US rules regulating Wall Street.... The FDIC insures deposits at US banks. The independent agency, which seized 25 failed banks last year and 32 so far this year, is collaborating with the Fed and the Treasury on temporary programs aimed at rescuing the banking system....
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