Sheila Colleen Bair (born April 3, 1954) is the Chairman of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) She was appointed to the post for a five-year term on June 26, 2006 by George W. Bush. Bair will also serve as a member of the FDIC Board of Directors through July 2013.
Career
Prior to her appointment at the FDIC, Bair was the Dean's Professor of Financial Regulatory Policy for the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a post she had held since 2002. She also served as Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the U.S. Department of the Treasury (2001 to 2002), Senior Vice President for Government Relations of the New York Stock Exchange (1995 to 2000), a Commissioner and Acting Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (1991 to 1995), and Research Director, Deputy Counsel and Counsel to Kansas Republican Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (1981 to 1988). While an academic, Bair also served on the FDIC's Advisory Committee on Banking Policy. Bair also pursued a seat in the U.S. Congress (she lost the 1990 Republican nomination in the 5th Kansas district by 760 votes to Dick Nichols).



Bair began her career in the General Counsel's office of the former US Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
Bair has published two books for children: Rock, Brock and the Savings Shock (2006) and Isabel's Car Wash (2008). Both titles show children good examples of money management.
Bair is married to Scott P. Cooper and has two children, Preston and Colleen.
Bair has played a key role in the management of the 2008 financial crisis. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, Bair was one of the first government officials to recognize the problem of subprime loans. Bair assumed a prominent role in the Bush administration's response to the crisis, including successfully pressing for a provision in the federal government's financial rescue bill that temporarily raised the cap on FDIC insured deposits to US$250,000 per account (although this was not made retroactive to include depositors of IndyMac Bank which had failed just 90 days beforehand). On July 14, 2008, Bair temporarily halted all of the foreclosures on bank-owned loans in the portfolio of IndyMac Bank. Her plan to modify mortgages had mixed results. Chairman Bair also oversaw the attempted acquisition of Wachovia by Citigroup, which was later nullified by the acquisition of Wachovia by Wells Fargo and the actual acquisition of Washington Mutual, the largest failed bank in history, by JP Morgan Chase. Her involvement in the Citibank-Wachovia deal has been criticized because it would have used taxpayer money to limit losses on Wachovia’s loan portfolio. The Wells Fargo-Wachovia deal “called for purchase of the entire company and required no government assistance. Bair publicly criticized the Bush Administration's $700 billion bailout package, saying it will not do enough to help Americans facing foreclosures.