FDIC’s Bair: Banks Making ‘Disingenuous’ Capital Claims
By Barry Ritholtz - July 22nd, 2010, 9:15AM
The FT interviewed FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair about the upcoming Basel III accords:
Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, has said some members of the committee setting international capital standards are “succumbing” to “disingenuous” lobbying from large banks.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Ms Bair also said she would not hesitate to use newly acquired powers to break up an institution if it could not provide a credible “living will” describing how it could be wound up in the event of failure.
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Source:
FDIC chief warns over capital standards
Tom Braithwaite
FT, July 20 2010
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/40271298-9428-11df-a3fe-00144feab49a.html
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July 22nd, 2010 at 10:45 am
Big Sheila fan
not much in this bill, but the resolution could work with superhuman efforts like possibly hers. Doubt she will be around for the next blowup. Need higher capital, but with accounting like it remains, no one (including her) knows within 3%pts of assets what each bank’s capital is. Still, the less you know about that, the more capital is required.
July 22nd, 2010 at 10:58 am
Usage Note: The meaning of disingenuous has been shifting about lately, as if people were unsure of its proper meaning. Generally, it means “insincere” and often seems to be a synonym of cynical or calculating. Not surprisingly, the word is used often in political contexts, as in It is both insensitive and disingenuous for the White House to describe its aid package and the proposal to eliminate the federal payment as “tough love.” This use of the word is accepted by 94 percent of the Usage Panel. Most Panelists also accept the extended meaning relating to less reproachable behavior. Fully 88 percent accept disingenuous with the meaning “playfully insincere, faux-naïf,” as in the example “I don’t have a clue about late Beethoven!” he said. The remark seemed disingenuous, coming from one of the world’s foremost concert pianists. Sometimes disingenuous is used as a synonym for naive, as if the dis- prefix functioned as an intensive (as it does in certain words like disannul) rather than as a negative element. This usage does not find much admiration among Panelists, however. Seventy-five percent do not accept it in the phrase a disingenuous tourist who falls prey to stereotypical con artists.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/disingenuous
disingenuous adjective artful, artificial, counterfeit, crafty, cunning, deceitful, deceiving, delusive, delusory, designing, devious, dishonest, dodging, evasive, false, false hearted, feigned, fraudulent, hypocritical, insidious, insincere, lacking frankness, lying, mendacious, misdealing, misleading, parum candidus, prevaricating, scheming, shifty, sly, spurious, tricky, truthless, uncandid, underhanded, unethical, ungenuine, unprincipled, unscrupulous, unstraightforward, untrustworthy, untruthful, wanting in candor, wily, without truth
——————————————————————————–
See also: corrupt, deceptive, dishonest, evasive, fraudulent, lying, machiavellian, oblique, sinister, tortuous, unconscionable, unscrupulous, untrue
Burton’s Legal Thesaurus, 4E. Copyright © 2007 by William C. Burton. Used with permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/disingenuous
Could We deign to believe that Sheila may be so forthcoming as to clarify her ‘statement’?
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/deign ( be so good as to )
July 22nd, 2010 at 1:02 pm
didn’t take her long to whip that threat out of the “enhanced” toolbox, did it?
July 22nd, 2010 at 1:11 pm
I think “intellectually dishonest” is better than disingenuous if one wants to be more forceful in the diplomatic approach to describing:
artful, artificial, counterfeit, crafty, cunning, deceitful, deceiving, delusive, delusory, designing, devious, dishonest, dodging, evasive, false, false hearted, feigned, fraudulent, hypocritical, insidious, insincere, lacking frankness, lying, mendacious, misdealing, misleading, parum candidus, prevaricating, scheming, shifty, sly, spurious, tricky, truthless, uncandid, underhanded, unethical, ungenuine, unprincipled, unscrupulous, unstraightforward, untrustworthy, untruthful, wanting in candor, wily, without truth
July 22nd, 2010 at 1:49 pm
of topic, but a $23M golden parachute for a city manager of a town of 40,000???
Has this story the LAT’s uncovered recently enraged anyone else?
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0722-bell-pension-20100722,0,5742952.story
The bright side is that LAT’s did some great investigative reporting here. I hope they (and other journalists) continue this trend (they were the ones to uncover that Wells Fargo exec using a foreclosed home in Malibu Colony as a weekend party house too).
July 22nd, 2010 at 3:41 pm
Why is it that in the USA, only women regulators have testicles?
July 22nd, 2010 at 4:32 pm
@cwf
you would’ve thought they were working at Goldman …
Ubiquitous excess and corruption … most discouraging …
July 22nd, 2010 at 5:11 pm
What is this Bair worship crap spewed by some here? Remember that Bair is against sound banking practices unless they further her agenda.
Forced rentbacks, foreclosure moratoria, free rent programs, using TARP money to force cramdowns and principal forgiveness… she’s backed ‘em all.
Wow, just wow.
July 23rd, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Chuck,
“Forced rentbacks, foreclosure moratoria, free rent programs, using TARP money to force cramdowns and principal forgiveness… she’s backed ‘em all.”
That’s why we like her.