Sheila Bair, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., describes what it was like in the room with former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke when the global economy was on the verge of falling into the abyss in this week’s “Masters in Business” podcast. Listen to the full interview below, or click through to Soundcloud.
Early in her career, Bair was recruited by Kansas Senator Bob Dole to serve as a counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee. She eventually rose to become counsel to Dole when he was Senate majority leader. Bair was commissioner and acting chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1991 to 1995 before serving as senior vice president for government relations at the New York Stock Exchange from 1995 to 2000. She was appointed as chairman of the FDIC in 2006. Under her direction, the FDIC was rated the best place in government to work. Her book on her time at the FDIC and the financial crisis is “Bull by the Horns: Fighting to Save Main Street from Wall Street and Wall Street from Itself.”
Bair has some surprising things to say about women in politics, bipartisanship and what it was like turning the FDIC around. You can stream the podcast at SoundCloud or download it here.
Next week, I’ll talk with James O’Shaughnessy of O’Shaughnessy Asset Management and author of “What Works On Wall Street.”
