American banks: On the mend
You know something has changed when one year you are second on the list of the world’s most powerful women, and the next year you drop to No. 15, outranked by Lady Gaga. To Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), that dip in ranking sends a good message. “My influence is declining,” she said. “That’s probably a good thing,” a sign that U.S. banks are stronger, and that the eyes of the world are no longer nervously riveted on finance regulation. Bair, who started her five-year term in 2006, made the Forbes magazine powerful-woman rankings three years in a row. In 2008, she was in the No. 2 spot, after German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The FDIC, created in 1933, guarantees the safety of deposits in member banks. It has $45 billion in cash on hand, and a $100 billion line of credit with the U.S. Treasury. Crisp and talking fast,...