Bull by the Horns: Fighting to Save Main Street from Wall Street and Wall Street from Itself - Softcover

Bair, Sheila

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1451672497 ISBN 13: 9781451672497

Verlag: Simon & Schuster, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

NEW YORK TIMES and WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER

The former FDIC chairwoman, and one of the first people to acknowledge the full risk of subprime loans, offers a unique perspective on the financial crisis.

Appointed by George W. Bush as the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in 2006, Sheila Bair witnessed the origins of the financial crisis and in 2008 became—along with Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner—one of the key public servants trying to repair the damage to the global economy. Bull by the Horns is her remarkable and refreshingly honest account of that contentious time and the struggle for reform that followed and continues to this day.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sheila Bair is the former Chairman of the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation). She has been covered—and lauded—everywhere from The New Yorker to The Washington Post to The Wall Street Journal, and in 2008 and 2009 Forbes named her the second-most powerful woman in the world. Prior to assuming her post at the FDIC, Bair served as assistant secretary for financial institutions at the US Department of the Treasury and as senior vice president for government relations of the New York Stock Exchange.

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Bull by the Horns

Prologue

Monday, October 12, 2008

I took a deep breath and walked into the large conference room at the Treasury Department. I was apprehensive and exhausted, having spent the entire weekend in marathon meetings with Treasury and the Fed. I felt myself start to tremble, and I hugged my thick briefing binder tightly to my chest in an effort to camouflage my nervousness. Nine men stood milling around in the room, peremptorily summoned there by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Collectively, they headed financial institutions representing about $9 trillion in assets, or 70 percent of the U.S. financial system. I would be damned if I would let them see me shaking.

I nodded briefly in their direction and started to make my way to the opposite side of the large polished mahogany table, where I and the rest of the government’s representatives would take our seats, facing off against the nine financial executives once the meeting began. My effort to slide around the group and escape the need for hand shaking and chitchat was foiled as Wells Fargo Chairman Richard Kovacevich quickly moved toward me. He was eager to give me an update on his bank’s acquisition of Wachovia, which, as chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), I had helped facilitate. He said it was going well. The bank was ready to go to market with a big capital raise. I told him I was glad. Kovacevich could be rude and abrupt, but he and his bank were very good at managing their business and executing on deals. I had no doubt that their acquisition of Wachovia would be completed smoothly and without disruption in banking services to Wachovia’s customers, including the millions of depositors whom the FDIC insured.

As we talked, out of the corner of my eye I caught Vikram Pandit looking our way. Pandit was the CEO of Citigroup, which had earlier bollixed its own attempt to buy Wachovia. There was bitterness in his eyes. He and his primary regulator, Timothy Geithner, the head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, were angry with me for refusing to object to the Wells acquisition of Wachovia, which had derailed Pandit’s and Geithner’s plans to let Citi buy it with financial assistance from the FDIC. I had little choice. Wells was a much stronger, better-managed bank and could buy Wachovia without help from us. Wachovia was failing and certainly needed a merger partner to stabilize it, but Citi had its own problems—as I was becoming increasingly aware. The last thing the FDIC needed was two mismanaged banks merging. Paulson and Bernanke did not fault my decision to acquiesce in the Wells acquisition. They understood that I was doing my job—protecting the FDIC and the millions of depositors we insured. But Geithner just couldn’t see things from my point of view. He never could.

Pandit looked nervous, and no wonder. More than any other institution represented in that room, his bank was in trouble. Frankly, I doubted that he was up to the job. He had been brought in to clean up the mess at Citi. He had gotten the job with the support of Robert Rubin, the former secretary of the Treasury who now served as Citi’s titular head. I thought Pandit had been a poor choice. He was a hedge fund manager by occupation and one with a mixed record at that. He had no experience as a commercial banker; yet now he was heading one of the biggest commercial banks in the country.

Still half listening to Kovacevich, I let my gaze drift toward Kenneth Lewis, who stood awkwardly at the end of the big conference table, away from the rest of the group. Lewis, the head of the North Carolina–based Bank of America (BofA)—had never really fit in with this crowd. He was viewed somewhat as a country bumpkin by the CEOs of the big New York banks, and not completely without justification. He was a decent traditional banker, but as a deal maker, his skills were clearly wanting, as demonstrated by his recent, overpriced bids to buy Countrywide Financial, a leading originator of toxic mortgages, and Merrill Lynch, a leading packager of securities based on toxic mortgages originated by Countrywide and its ilk. His bank had been healthy going into the crisis but would now be burdened by those ill-timed, overly generous acquisitions of two of the sickest financial institutions in the country.

Other CEOs were smarter. The smartest was Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who stood at the center of the table, talking with Lloyd Blankfein, the head of Goldman Sachs, and John Mack, the CEO of Morgan Stanley. Dimon was a towering figure in height as well as leadership ability, a point underscored by his proximity to the diminutive Blankfein. Dimon had forewarned of deteriorating conditions in the subprime market in 2006 and had taken preemptive measures to protect his bank before the crisis hit. As a consequence, while other institutions were reeling, mighty JPMorgan Chase had scooped up weaker institutions at bargain prices. Several months earlier, at the request of the New York Fed, and with its financial assistance, he had purchased Bear Stearns, a failing investment bank. Just a few weeks ago, he had purchased Washington Mutual (WaMu), a failed West Coast mortgage lender, from us in a competitive process that had required no financial assistance from the government. (Three years later, Dimon would stumble badly on derivatives bets gone wrong, generating billions in losses for his bank. But on that day, he was undeniably the king of the roost.)

Blankfein and Mack listened attentively to whatever it was Dimon was saying. They headed the country’s two leading investment firms, both of which were teetering on the edge. Blankfein’s Goldman Sachs was in better shape than Mack’s Morgan Stanley. Both suffered from high levels of leverage, giving them little room to maneuver as losses on their mortgage-related securities mounted. Blankfein, whose puckish charm and quick wit belied a reputation for tough, if not ruthless, business acumen, had recently secured additional capital from the legendary investor Warren Buffett. Buffett’s investment had not only brought Goldman $5 billion of much-needed capital, it had also created market confidence in the firm: if Buffett thought Goldman was a good buy, the place must be okay. Similarly, Mack, the patrician head of Morgan, had secured commitments of new capital from Mitsubishi Bank. The ability to tap into the deep pockets of this Japanese giant would probably by itself be enough to get Morgan through.

Not so Merrill Lynch, which was most certainly insolvent. Even as clear warning signs had emerged, Merrill had kept taking on more leverage while loading up on toxic mortgage investments. Merrill’s new CEO, John Thain, stood outside the perimeter of the Dimon-Blankfein-Mack group, trying to listen in on their conversation. Frankly, I was surprised that he had even been invited. He was younger and less seasoned than the rest of the group. He had been Merrill’s CEO for less than a year. His main accomplishment had been to engineer its overpriced sale to BofA. Once the BofA acquisition was complete, he would no longer be CEO, if he survived at all. (He didn’t. He was subsequently ousted over his payment of excessive bonuses and lavish office renovations.)

At the other end of the table stood Robert Kelly, the CEO of Bank of New York (BoNY) and Ronald Logue, the CEO of State Street Corporation. I had never met Logue. Kelly I knew primarily by reputation. He was known as a conservative banker (the best kind in my book) with Canadian roots—highly competent but perhaps a bit full of himself. The...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Simon & Schuster
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1451672497
• ISBN 13: 9781451672497
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 440
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Simon & Schuster; https://simonandschuster.ca; ; Via Mondadori 1,; Segrate Milano; 20090; Italien