Seven Questions for Sheila Bair

Editor’s note: Ask and ye shall receive. We received some excellent and provocative questions for FDIC Chair Sheila Bair in response to our request here on the Business Desk. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Paul sat down with Bair this morning at FDIC headquarters in Washington, and his interview appears on Friday’s NewsHour.

Bair also answered seven questions from NewsHour viewers — on topics ranging from the power of the banking lobby and what to look for to judge a bank’s health to lessons learned from other countries’ banking rules and the changing role of the FDIC.

We were particularly interested to hear Bair’s response to a reader question on what she’d do differently in hindsight. Her response: She wished she’d dissuaded Treasury from using federal bailout dollars to prop up big financial institutions with capital infusions last fall, not least because of the thorny issues raised by government ownership of these banks and the public outcry that ensued.

Watch Bair’s exclusive interview answering NewsHour viewers’ questions below.