Former FDIC Head Sheila Bair Says The Feds Had Better Explain Exactly Why They Decided To Bail Out Uninsured Depositors At SVB and Signature

We are fans of Ms, Bair, she's a very clear thinker and not shy about sharing those thoughts.

The D.C. Establishment hates her.

From Yahoo Finance, March 15:

Ex-FDIC boss Sheila Bair asks regulators to be ‘crystal clear’ about systemic risk
Bair, who ran the FDIC during the 2008 financial crisis, urged regulators to say more about why they rescued all Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank depositors

Last weekend the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) announced that it would cover uninsured depositors of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, asserting the lenders pose a "systemic risk." During a recent appearance on Yahoo Finance, former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair questioned that decision.

"I think the communications around this by the regulators needs to really be crystal clear why they view these two banks as systemic. What was systemic about it?" she told Yahoo Finance. "The uninsured depositors probably wouldn't have had to take that many losses." More than 85 percent of Silicon Valley Bank deposits and roughly 90 percent of Signature Bank’s deposits were uninsured at the end of last year, according to bank filings....

....MUCH MORE

This was the big one: "Report: U.S. seizes Washington Mutual (WM)", the largest bank failure in U.S. history. Bair oversaw it and the seizure so angered Timothy Geithner who was President of the New York Fed 2003 -2009 i.e. at the exact time the rot in the banks was growing like a cancer, he was so angered that when Ms. Bair and the FDIC were about to seize Wachovia he declared Wachovia  systemically important i.e. too big to fail, the first such designation in history. The Establishment rewarded Geithner by making him Treasury Secretary under President Obama.

As we said in 2010's "Happy Anniversary, Wells Fargo and Wachovia!" (WFC; WB)"
The whole Wachovia story, from the acquisition of Golden West to the takeover by Wells Fargo stinks to high heaven....

But back to Ms Bair, here's Mark Gongloff, now at Bloomberg in 2012: 

"Sheila Bair Leads New Justice League Of Bank Regulation "

Meet the Justice League of bank regulation.

In a world ruled by powerful bankers, where politicians and regulators are compromised and weak, only a vigilante team of heroes with super-regulatory powers can keep us safe from rolling financial crises. Hopefully, at least.

This team, called the Systemic Risk Council, will be led by the financial world's Wonder Woman, Sheila Bair, former head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Since the financial crisis, Bair has earned a reputation as one of the few bank regulators not completely captured by the industry. She has been less likely than most to fall on her fainting couch at the thought of breaking up the mega-banks, curbing banker pay or other taboo subjects....

If you can't quite place the writer, it's Mark Gongloff displaying a slightly looser style than the one he used on the WSJ's Heard on the Street and Ahead of the Tape columns.

Looser even than the one we saw at MarketBeat where he sometimes scared the bleacher bums by joining them somewhere out in left field.

Here's the rest of the Bair story, at the HuffPo.