A former top financial regulator harshly criticizes President Obama’s first-term economic team in a young adult novel set to be published Tuesday, saying that they were more interested in big banks than in addressing the impact of the financial crisis on families.
Sheila Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation during the 2008 crisis and into President Obama’s presidency, writes in an excerpt of her forthcoming book published in Fortune magazine that Obama was committed to helping families hurt by the recovery, especially through a housing rescue program that would later struggle, his top advisers were not. She wrote that top adviser Larry Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner “did not share his priorities. They cared more about the big banks.”
Bair’s book is titled “The bullies of Wall Street: This is how greedy adults messed up our economy.”
Bair published a memoir in 2012 that recounted her experiences at the FDIC during the crisis and in the legislative negotiations over the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul law. That book also included pointed criticisms of top regulators in both the Obama and Bush administrations.
Her newest book will be one-half “fictionalized anecdotes to better convey specific repercussions of decisions made by those in power [at banks and in government] during the financial crisis,” a representative for the publisher Simon & Schuster told the Washington Examiner.
Bair said through her publisher that she decided to use fictional stories inspired by true events to appeal to younger people. ”
I thought I would have a better chance of engaging them if I recounted the crisis through stories which they could relate to personally,” Bair said. “Losing your home, a beloved pet, or confronting emotional and financial stress when a parent loses a job- these are all things that happened to millions of kids. This crisis took an incredible human toll. I want future generations to understand that so they will not let it happen again.”
The second half of the book, from which the criticism of Summers and Geithner is excerpted, is a “non-fiction account of her own experiences as chairman of the FDIC during this time,” the representative said.
The excerpt from the first chapter of the book features a fictionalized account of a teen named Matt who has to put down his pet dog when his family loses its house after refinancing into a dangerous mortgage, falls behind on the payments, and has to downsize into a house with no room for a dog.
Bair, who was appointed to the FDIC by George W. Bush in 2006 and remained in office until 2011, is known as a top critic of Wall Street practices and of the management of the 2008 bailouts. She now runs the Systemic Risk Council, an outside, nonpartisan group that analyzes regulatory practices. She is also a member of the board of directors of the Spain-headquartered bank Santander.
