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Sheila Bair and Brooksley Born receive Profile in Courage Award

Sheila C. Bair, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and Brooksley Born, the former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in Washington, were honored today for sounding the alarm about the economic crisis.

Sheila C. Bair, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and Brooksley Born, the former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in Washington, were honored today for sounding the alarm about the economic crisis.
Both received the Profile in Courage Award from the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation in Boston this morning.
Ms. Bair was honored for her “early warnings about the subprime-lending crisis and for her dogged criticism of both Wall Street’s and the government’s management of the subsequent financial meltdown,” according to the foundation.
Pointing to an example of a successful loan modifications orchestrated by the FDIC at Pasadena, Calif.-based IndyMac Bank FSB last July, she said that the restructuring of loans for more than 13,000 families resulted in prevented foreclosures.
“We proved that systematic loan modifications could work, providing a template that other banks began to use and now serves as a cornerstone of the president’s national loan modification program,” Ms. Bair said.
She joined Ms. Born in becoming the first non-elected officials in the financial services sector to receive the award.
Ms. Born was honored for her efforts a decade ago to warn that unregulated financial contracts such as credit default swaps could pose a danger to the economy and for her unsuccessful efforts in trying to bring over-the-counter derivatives under regulatory control.
“No federal or state regulator has market oversight responsibilities for regulatory powers governing the over-the-counter-derivatives market or indeed has even sufficient information to understand the market’s operations,” she said in her acceptance speech. “The new regulatory scheme should provide that the instruments must be traded on regulated derivatives exchanges and cleared by regulated derivatives clearing houses to the extent feasible.”
Also honored today was Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee.
The award, named for President Kennedy’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Profiles in Courage” (Harper & Brothers), is presented annually to public servants “who have made courageous decisions of conscience without regard for personal or professional consequences,” according to the foundation.