From Barings to Bear Stearns, Sheila Bair has been at the forefront of crisis management. In her current position as the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., she is playing a key role in containing the financial crisis and restoring the flow of credit to the housing sector. What few outside the futures industry realize is that she played an equally important role in the debate on derivatives regulation during the first half of the 1990s. As a commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1991 to 1995, the Kansas native served at the agency during a time when lawmakers were considering major changes to futures trading laws after the collapse of Barings Bank. She also was one of the main architects of the CFTC’s efforts to clarify over-the-counter derivatives oversight and a strong proponent for better inter-agency coordination, which helped pave the way for the revitalization of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets during the Clinton administration.
