Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

by Andrew Ross Sorkin

Geithner and Warsh set up a conference call to coordinate their efforts with Bair, the fifty-four-year-old chairwoman of the FDIC and one of their least favorite people in government. They had always regarded Bair as a showboat, a media grandstander, a politician in a regulator’s position whose only concern was to protect the FDIC, not the entire system. She was not, in their view, a team player. Geithner would frequently commiserate about Bair with Paulson, who shared a similar perspective about her. At times, Paulson had a genuine respect for her. “She comes to play,” he regularly said to his staff, but added, “When she is surrounded by her people, when she’s peacocking for other people or she’s worried about the press, then she’s going to be miserable.”