image from Progressive Majority Wisconsin

ScienceBlogger Mike the Mad Biologist is all over the story of how Sheila Bair, head of the FDIC, has been dissed and mistreated by the folks in charge:

Sheila Bair, Geithner, and the acceptance of male hysteria.



(I also like Mike's name for the Big Meltdown - he calls it the Big Shitpile.)

It would seem to me that if Obama is serious about reaching out to Republicans, keeping Sheila Bair on as head of FDIC is a no-brainer. Yet Treasury nominee Geithner does not support her. I can't figure out what Bair did wrong (and I'm not being snarky).

He goes on to cite a Bloomberg account:

Geithner became increasingly wary of Bair as she worked with the other regulatory agencies on emergency bailouts of banks in recent months. The New York fed chief has been concerned that Bair was more worried about keeping the FDIC's insurance program protected than she was about the entire financial system, one person said.

The evidence? That she tried to get concessions which would have given the taxpayer something in return for bailing out Citigroup. (And Mike is quite correct in identifying the FDIC as the actor who represents the public in this little scenario. Protecting the FDIC vs. giving Citigroup free reign? Oh, the horror!)



But the best part of the post is this:

But what's really odd about this story is this comment by Democratic congressman Barney Frank:

"I think part of the problem now, to be honest, is Sheila Bair has annoyed the 'old boys' club,'" Frank said today. "To some extent, bank regulation and mortgage foreclosure have made a situation where we have several regulators up in the tree house with a 'no girls allowed' sign -- and it's aimed at Sheila Bair - - who's been really good."

Frank could have phrased this differently. He didn't have to refer to latent (or overt) sexism when describing Bair's situation. Frank could have just referred to 'Bair protecting Main Street' or some other similar phrase.

What's struck me about the whole bailout was how grounded in hysteria the whole operation was. Now, I don't mean Paulson et al. ran around shrieking and fainting--after all, that is 'what women do.' But they were extremely panicked, and rather than calmly working the situation, they freaked out. We needed a bailout plan RIGHT NOW! So we had the sorry spectacle of Paulson and a bunch of other sleep-deprived middle-aged men (and they were almost entirely men) isolating themselves from other people in an economic situation room, "hammering out" a bailout--no doubt using their Big Swinging Cocks.

Yup.

I have no idea what was said in private, but it seems to me that Bair didn't lose her shit during the crisis by realizing that a few days of tough negotiations wouldn't make a differnce, unlike the architects of the bailout--a bailout which hasn't led to relaxed credit.



The girl was smarter than the scared boys.

Which is why some of us (*ahem*) thought that if Obama had to be appointing Republicans as part of his postpartisan shtick, Sheila Bair wouldn't have been a half-bad choice. For Treasury, for example. And it would have been a gesture affirming his commitment to appointing qualified women and trying to work toward gender parity. (I can dream, can't I?)



But I guess that calm competence doesn't matter as much as going along with the program and "being one of us".



[See also here and pretty much all of these.]