Boys Club Con't

A few weeks ago I argued that the reason that the bad boys couldn't corral Sheila Bair for their save-the-world program is that they treated her like a girl. In Too Big to Save? Robert Pozen appears to see another episode of the same sort. The subject is Brooksly Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation back in the Clinton administration who wanted to regulate nonstandard credit default swaps.

[H]er views were curtly dismissed by then Federal Reserve Chair [Alan] Greenspan as well as then SEC Chair Arthur Levitt and then Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. As Michael Greenberger, a senior CFTC official at the time, explained: "Greenspan told Brooklsy that she essentially didn't know what she was doing and she'd cause a financial crisis. Brooksly was this woman who was not playing tennis with these guys and not having lunch with these guys. There was a little bit of the feeling that this woman was not of Wall Street.

--Pozen in the uncitable Kindel edition, citing Peter S. Goodman, "Taking a Hard New Look at a Greenspan Legacy," New York Times, October 9, 2008, p. A1.