For decades, William Isaac’s insights on the U.S. financial system have been featured in leading news publications. Now, you can browse them all in one location.
in leading business publications
Fifth Third Bancorp Chairman William Isaac sees some welcome news in the wake of the financial panic that saw venerable Wall Street titans collapse and credit freeze: It’s not as bad as the 1980s crisis he witnessed while chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
By Nathan Stovall for SNL Financial
William Isaac served as the chairman of the FDIC from 1978 to 1985, overseeing the resolution of numerous failed banks, including the winding down of large institutions such as Continental Illinois, the nation’s seventh-largest bank prior to its failure in 1984. Isaac is now the chairman of LECG Global Financial Services and Fifth Third Bancorp.
By Molly Gray for The Lantern
William Isaac has one entity to blame for the devastating impact of the 2008 financial panic: Washington.
Isaac, who served as the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) during the 1980s, a decade that saw America’s last sweeping bank crisis, will be on campus at 1:45 p.m. tomorrow in Saxbe Auditorium in Drinko Hall to discuss his book, “Senseless Panic: How Washington Failed America.”
Former FDIC chairman and author William Isaac explains why he thinks banks are not more profitable and tells what factors will determine which banks will ultimately be successful.
Click here to view the interview on MoneyShow.com
By: Mark Gordon, Managing Editor for the Gulf Coast Business Review
Bill Isaac, onetime chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., recently wrote a book about the mistakes he says political leaders made that led to many of the county’s current financial problems. Isaac lives in Sarasota.
By Heather Landy, Paul Davis and Jeff Horwitz for the American Banker
Unplugged … Again
“Poppycock.” That was former bank regulator Bill Isaac’s one-word assessment of former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s claim that he had no authority to rescue Lehman Brothers Inc., and it cut through the cocktail-hour din to garner laughter and applause from Isaac’s audience.
By Steve Forbes, Editor-In-Chief at Forbes
Here’s good news for investors and the economy. To everyone’s surprise Robert Herz stepped down as chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board last month. Herz was the driver behind the disastrous 2007 FASB ruling concerning mark-to-market accounting for banks and insurance companies. The ruling unnecessarily destroyed some $500 billion in regulatory capital of these institutions in 2008–09, thereby triggering the financial panic. Once Congress forced FASB and the SEC to amend the ruling in April 2009, the devastated financial markets began a big rally that lasted until this summer.
by Henry Blodget for Yahoo Finance
The massive Wall Street bailout in the financial crisis was justified on the grounds that banks had to be saved so they could keep lending to the “real economy.”
Unfortunately, despite the bailout, the “real economy” has been clobbered–in part because bank lending has fallen off a cliff.
by Aaron Task for Yahoo Finance
The two-year anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy has prompted widespread discussion of the causes of the crisis and its aftermath.
William Isaac, former FDIC chairman and current chairman of Fifth Third Bancorp, believes “20 years of bad policy” and lax risk management on Wall Street laid the groundwork for the crisis of 2008. Most observers would agree with that.