Maybe the best interview with with FDIC head Sheila Bair I've seen. There's a lot in this clip from last night's Kudlow & Company. Article link and quotes are inside.
Broadcast September 1, 2009.
- Commercial loans are “going to be a bigger driver of bank failures towards the end of this year into next year,” adding that residential mortgages were still a bigger percentage of where the credit distress was right now.
- “There's some positive news out there on the economy, and even though banks will continue to work through cleaning up their balance sheet, we saw a few glimmers of hope in the second quarter results...I think we just need to say what we've always said, that it's going to take time to work through these credit losses, but we'll get out of this."
- “I think a monopoly regulator like that could make things worse, not better,” she said. “There hasn't been a great experience in Europe with these—with these monopoly regulators, and I think there is a tendency for them to become even more dominated by very large institutions, which I think would help—hurt the smaller institutions.” A single banking regulator could undermine the country’s 150-year-old system of both state, federal chartered and separately regulated institutions, she added.