“The balance of power has shifted too far in favor of large financial interests in Washington,” Sheila Bair said in the interview. “The bailouts, and the quantitative easing that continues, have overwhelmingly benefited the upper classes. Workers, homeowners, small businesses have by and large been left to fend for themselves.”
It has become almost unpatriotic to question the many and munificent bank rescues of 2008 and beyond. If you have the temerity to do so, you’re likely to hear that the bailouts were the only thing standing between us and financial obliteration. You will also be told that, four years on, many of the bailouts have made money.
It’s hard to argue against this narrative, not knowing what would have happened had cooler heads prevailed. But Sheila C. Bair, former chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, is well positioned to question the dogma of the bailout brigade. And she does so repeatedly in “Bull by the Horns,” her new book about the crisis. As one of the main participants in the battles surrounding the rescues, and perhaps the coolest head in attendance, Ms. Bair provides some straight talk that represents an important piece of history and a rebuttal to the conventional wisdom.
As described by Ms. Bair, the events of the fall of 2008 showed that many financial regulators were desperate to make anyone but those who created the crisis pay for its devastation.
For example, taxpayers and the many smaller banks that pay into the F.D.I.C. fund that insures bank deposits were those most likely to be assigned responsibility for the bailout costs, Ms. Bair writes. Needless to say, these people had no seats at the rescue tables.
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