Bank Lawyer's Blog

Employees: The Chink In The Armor Of Information Security

Last May, we profiled the risk of rogue sociopathic employees who help outsiders steal sensitive data from banks, mortgage lenders, and other businesses. In that story, former employees disclosed passwords that were not changed after the employees left the business. According to a recent study by Cisco, a bank's current  employees pose even more of a security risk.

Employees could be to blame for one of the most prominent security concerns facing businesses today: loss of corporate information.

So say findings from a new Cisco global security study. The report offers insight into the risks employees take that could cause data leakage.

The reason is clear: With the move toward distributed business models and remote workforces, lines are blurring between work and home lives. That’s leading to more collaborative devices and applications, including mobile phones, laptops, Web 2.0 applications, video and other social media.

[...]

Security is ultimately rooted in users’ behavior, so businesses of all sizes and employees in all professions need to understand how behavior affects the risk and reality of data loss — and what that ultimately means for both the individual and enterprise, according to John Stewart, chief security officer at Cisco.

"Understanding this can help strengthen relationships between IT and employees, tailor localized awareness and education programs, and better manage risk," Stewart said.

The takeaway: There are opportunities for businesses to tailor risk-management plans that prevent data loss incidents locally while remaining global in scope. While some solutions are technology-based and others are policy-based, the common denominator in these programs is employee education.

"Companies need a strong set of policies and consequences for breaking them," said Michelle Drolet, CEO of IT security services firm Towerwall in Framingham. "The employees need to be clear about the rules for handling information and using technology."

An information security officer for a banking client recently told me that employees remain his biggest concern  with respect to data leaks and information security system breaches. No matter the policies and procedures, the training sessions, the education, and the penalties imposed for violating information security policies, no business has yet found the magic bullet to deal with the "dumb-ass factor" (his term, not mine). I suppose capital punishment might bring the point home, but that seems a bit harsh.

Cisco's study confirm's my client's officer's jaundiced view.

Still, even with awareness programs, employee handbooks and information security training, and appreciation, workers remain a common point of failure in the information security equation.

Employees tend to lose laptops or portable storage, store logins and passwords, share sensitive corporate information or corporate devices, and alter security settings on computers, according to the Cisco study.

[...]

"A lot of our clients are looking into ways to prevent the use of flash drives by locking the ports so they can’t use them and putting some level of protection on laptops to encrypt the data in the hard drive," said Glenn Siriano, a principal of KPMG’s Information Technology Advisory Services. "But you still see people posting sticky notes with their passwords on the desktop."

The sticky notes problem is definitely a prime example of "the dumb-ass factor" at work. Such employees need to put out to pasture. Unless, of course, he oe she is a senior officer, in which case you give him or her a bonus and a promotion.

As compliance officers of banks have long known, unless senior bank management makes the failure to comply with a policy a termination offense, and enforces the penalties consistently, all the well intentioned policies, procedures, education and training in the world aren't going to be enough to stem the tide. In addition, as the article also suggests, banks and other businesses need to invest in the necessary technology-based solutions and/or consulting engagements to minimize the risks. During a time when everyone's uncertain how bad the economy is going to become (just that it's bound to be bad), convincing banks and other businesses to make such investments is going to be a tough sell, absent regulatory sanctions or other painful experiences (hits to reputations, lawsuits, etc.) that make the risks impossible to ignore. As we've previously observed, many businesses have decided that, as things now stand, the risk doesn't justify the expense.

Pull The Turkey From The Lawyer's Butt And Win A New Job

I didn't intend to post again until next week, but this story of dysfunctional telemarketing to a lawyer was just too good to pass up.

This younger generation really has issues with rejection, eh?

Technically, using a telephone to anonymously annoy or harass another person is a violation of federal law. Ultimately, who is the turkey in this story?

Don't Do DAP, Says HUD's "Top Cop"

As Democrats in Congress gear up to push through the return of seller-funded downpayment assistance (DAP) for FHA loans in 2009, at least one "top cop" with plenty of skin in the game thinks that's a really bad idea. HUD's inspector general, Kenneth Donohoe, spoke to a recent SourceMedia Mortgage Fraud Conference recently about the impact of fraud on the subprime mortgage meltdown. While he thinks that putting as many mortgage fraudsters behind bars as the jails will hold will send a message to crooks, he also thinks that we may not have yet seen the worst of the fraud, although we've seen "the tip of the iceberg."

"I like to think we've finally seen the iceberg, but I'm still not sure," he said.

I like to think that when we've finally seen the iceberg, we're not sailing on the Titanic, but I'm still not sure.

What worries him even more than past fraud is what lies ahead.

The inspector general said that, given the depth of fraud, he is particularly worried about the ability of the Federal Housing Administration to undertake the heavy load of refinancings that lawmakers are asking the agency to handle, especially since "lenders are made whole, leaving the FHA to take the hit."

Of course, that's the plan: rescue the big lenders, particularly those in a swath from D.C. to NYC and a few choice spots elsewhere (Charlotte, North Carolina, for one), then socialize the losses. The rest of the banking business, and all of the mortgage borrowers, can fend for themselves. As for the FHA, the paln may be to make FHA loans "the new subprime."

Mr. Donohoe does see some hope, however, in a couple of recent events, one being the demise of seller-funded downpayment assistance for FHA loans.

Two recent actions that might save the FHA are an increase in penalties against anyone who acts to defraud the agency - up to 30 years in prison and $100 million in fines - and the prohibition of down payment assistance to borrowers from anyone who has a stake in the sale, according to Mr. Donohoe.

"Down payment assistance has been a magnet for all kinds of fraud schemes," he said. "If it was allowed to continue unabated, it would not have been just a nail in FHA's coffin, it would have killed it."

Unfortunately Ken, when it comes to killing the FHA, there's always next year. Even without Congress or DAP, "motivated" borrowers will always find a way, legal or not.

Have a nice Bird Day. See you next week.

And You Thought YOU Were Having A Bad Day

From Bruce Carton, editor of Securities Docket, via a "tweet" on Twitter (don't ask, Google it), comes word of one lawyer's nightmare of a day in court. If you're going to sue AIG in Justice Ramos's court, you'd better either have a rock-solid case or you'd better be wearing asbestos underwear.

Justice Ramos saved his angriest words for Starr's counsel, Rebecca Fine of Schindler, Cohen & Hochman. "It costs, I think, $11,000 a day for this courtroom. I'm insulted," he said. "I have cases with real plaintiffs who have lost real money who have real cases. Between Starr Foundation, AIG, and the attorney general's office I must have decided already a hundred motions on these issues involving AIG. How much time do you think I have? Not enough. There isn't enough time in the day to write everything I have to write on these cases. I'd love to write a 50-page opinion on this, excoriating you for bringing this kind of lawsuit."

Fine declined comment to us.

It's difficult to comment when you're sobbing uncontrollably.

The judge didn't let the client off the hook, either. He dismissed the suit after the plaintiff foundation's president gave testimony that was refuted on cross examination and by contrary contemporaneous actions of the plaintiff. He then turned is baleful gaze on the poor president.and proceeded to take her breath away.

At one point, the judge warned Davis about criminal contempt charges, which prompted the foundation president to ask for a break to retrieve her asthma inhaler.

I wonder what Justice Ramos is like when he's feeling really cranky? Like Jack Bauer with a bad hangover, I imagine.

What A Surprise!

An article in the December 1 issue of The New Yorker entitled "Anatomy of a Meltdown" contained some interesting--some might say shocking--admissions by Ben Bernanke about how befuddled he was about the onset of the current financial crisis. Paul Jackson at Housing Wire is befuddled by Mr. Bernanke's befuddlement, and is appalled by this statement of Bernanke's: “The causal relationship between the housing problem and the broad financial system was very complex and difficult to predict.”

It may have been "very complex," as Bernanke suggests, but the current crisis was by no means "difficult to predict." And anyone selling that line of logic now misses the myriad of voices that wrote in detail about this mess well before it took place. A very basic shift in economic awareness has taken place as the crisis has worn on; nearly everyone has, by now, been introduced to the originate-and-sell model of mortgage securitization, the engine that provided liquidity on a global scale (and reached well outside of the housing sector, it should be noted).

But I can recall in late 2006 hearing economists pontificate that the "subprime mess will be contained," blissfully unaware of just how embedded mortgage financing had become into the economic and broader financial markets. And, frankly, there is simply no excuse for that sort of oversight; understanding the economic landscape is their primary job, for God’s sake. The size of the bond markets geared towards mortgages alone was/is beyond substantial. The idea that problems in that market could resonate throughout the entire system should not — I repeat, NOT — have been a surprise to anyone.

Least of all the guy that is now being painted by his peers as "the smartest guy in the room."

Here's Paul's basic point:

The bitter truth — the pill that no regulator wants to swallow right now — is that most economists and regulators were asleep at the wheel. The idea of self-regulation permeated the environment, perhaps thanks to Greenspan, sure. But even if regulators had decided to clamp down on what was happening, they would have had to at least have some idea of what was actually taking place.

The picture being painted in the rearview mirror now suggests a far worse transgression than a policy misstep: it suggests that key regulators and economists understood little about the secondary mortgage markets to begin with. The reason so few in the financial markets saw this coming is because so few actually understood either how the market was structured, or how far it really reached. And that, to me, is far more troubling than a debate over regulatory ideology and course.

They didn't understand the secondary mortgage markets then and they still don't understand them (if my e-mail is any indication). Yet, that hasn't stopped them, and won't stop them, from creating and implementing all sorts of "solutions" to "solve" the crisis and "ensure" that it never again occurs.

You ever feel like you're in the passenger seat of a 1967 Chevy Malibu convertible, the top down, racing through the Nevada desert under the glare of the noonday sun at over a hundred miles an hour, the radio blasting Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Run Through The Jungle," swigging a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel's Black, head about to explode, and you look over at the driver and see it's Hunter Thompson about to take his third hit of acid? Me, too.

Congress Cries "Cram It!"

Bankruptcy cram-down legislation for residential mortgages is back on the front burner. When we last looked at this proposal, its chances of enactment looked favorable, but it was stripped out of the legislation to which it had been appended prior to passage. However, as Luke Mullin notes, the post-election world is a whole new era for Democrats eager to make the evil banking business pay for its sins, and, at the same time, to help consumers who can't pay their home loans today prove that they won't be able to pay a stripped down mortgage a few months or years hence. That way, everybody loses, but politicians make it appear that they've actually accomplished something of long-term benefit.  That's the American way, no?

Given the makeup of the US House and Senate, and with Barack Obama in the White House, I don't think that the "tough fight" by the lending business that Luke correctly forecasts will ultimately prove successful this time around. The argument that banks have made repeatedly to thwart such legislation is that the reason that cram-down for residential first-lien mortgages was omitted from the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978 was that it would make residential mortgage lending more expensive for homeowners and would restrict the access to credit for millions of potential homeowners. I think that a large portion of the American public is at a point where it thinks that making residential mortgages tougher to obtain for millions of homeowners is not such a bad idea. Loose underwriting (in addition to outright criminal behavior and borederline-lunatic risk taking on Wall Street) played a huge role in creating the current crisis. If factoring in the risk of a cram-down in bankruptcy increases the cost of residential mortgage credit in the same way that it's increased the cost of commercial mortgage credit, "so be it," say most of the the non-bankers with whom I discuss the issue.

In addition, the drumbeat continues to "stop the tsunami of foreclosures." Letting the market sort itself out with respect to borrowers lacks popular appeal  (regardless of its logical force with free market advocates), since the current "conservative" administration decided to intervene to save lenders and securitizers. Rather than the thus-far slow and inefficient process of having loan servicers sort through the loan modification morass at a pace that has pleased no one, foreclosure opponents might prefer that a bankruptcy court not only stop the foreclosure, but re-write the loan while it's at it. Of course, the borrower will have to file bankruptcy first, which will screw up his or her credit for years to come, but that's a trade-off many may be willing to make to keep their homes. Again, if this makes residential lending tougher in the future, that's the price of "fairness" and besides, this is America: we live solely for today.

At least, that's the line today. When cramdowns, and other restrictions on first lien residential mortgage lending, have been enacted by the next Congress, and their full effect is felt, I have no doubt that many of these same folks will be moaning about how hard it is to qulaify, and afford, a home loan. I also have no doubt that among those moaners will be Bill Delahunt and Dick Durbin.

Rocky Mountain Whack-A-Mole

While privately-held banks (other than Subchapter S and mutuals) scramble to sort out the CPP and decide, in short order, "to be or not to be" in bed with Uncle Sam, other participants in the mortgage market continue to prey on consumers. You thought the bad guys had been driven out of the market because the secondary market for subprime loans went the way of Cloris Leachman on "Dancing With The Stars"? No, they've just oozed their way into other avenues of slime or into new variations of the same old avenues. One state's Attorney General is relentlessly hunting them down and rooting them out (or at least, hosing them down).

Three Colorado mortgage brokers have reached settlements with state Attorney General John Suthers to end what Suthers called the "deceptive use of teaser rates in mortgage-loan advertisements"in Denver newspapers.

The agreements were part of a larger "crackdown on deceptive mortgage brokers and foreclosure rescue firms" involving several other businesses, Suthers' office said in a statement Tuesday. The crackdown especially targeted what Suthers alleged were deceptive practices concerning the offer of so-called option adjustable rate mortgage loans (option ARMs).

[...]

Suthers’ statement said the three companies advertised in the “Mortgage Marketplace” sections of The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, offering low teaser rates or low minimum monthly payments associated with option ARMs.

“Disclosures of true interest rates and other loan terms were buried in agate footnotes, if included at all,” Suthers' statement said. "Several of the brokers interviewed during the course of these investigations remarked that these advertisements 'made the phones ring.'"

In the settlement with state prosecutors, the three brokers "agreed to advertise only traditional fixed rate loans or traditional ARMs, not option ARMs," and to disclose loan terms in readable print, Suthers said.

Suthers also filed a civil lawsuit against another firm to stop it from allegedly using "direct mail to market risky option ARM loans to borrowers without disclosing the associated risks." That's one way to stop the option ARM business, or at least a piece of it, I suppose. On the other hand, at this stage of the game, you'd have to be a complete moron to be suckered into an option ARM. Maybe that's who these folks were preying upon.

It's not just options ARMs that have Suthers exercised. His office also announced settlements with one mortgage broker who was putting money into applicants' accounts in order to falsely inflate their net worth to qualify them for larger loans, and with another lender that was sending false advertisements to homeowners that appeared to be from the homeowners' bank, urging them to refinance. Finally, Suthers' office reached cease and desist agreements with seven foreclosure rescue firms who were violating Colorado law.

When times are tough, the corner-cutters get busy, don't they? We've joked before about regulators playing "whack-a-mole" in certain situations. We're glad that guys like Suthers are willing to keep playing that game in a state that's had its fair share of mortgage-related fraud.

As we continue to sink into a massive recession/depression, it's irritating to consider the constant stream of borderline and over-the-borderline fraudsters who are trying to take advantage of other people's pain. One is reminded of the words of H.L. Mencken: "Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and start slitting throats."

Go Sheila, Go Sheila! Uh-Huh, Uh-Huh!

While FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair may give many of us in the private sector a bad case of shingles, within the FDIC she's hotter than a photo of a passionate lip-lock between Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. At least, that's what Emily Flitter at the American Banker's BankThink blog reports.

Hell no, don’t let Sheila go!

That’s the chant of Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. employees hoping to keep Chairman Sheila Bair in place in a new administration.

A Web site, thepetitionsite.com, now boasts a notice from agency employees asking President-elect Barack Obama to keep Ms. Bair on in her current post. “Chairman Bair is promoting a workplace environment where we are treated with respect and empowered to be successful in our jobs,” the petition reads. “Chairman Bair exhibits the FDIC's corporate values of fairness, teamwork, integrity, competence, effectiveness, financial responsibility, open and honest communication, empowerment, and effective leadership. For all the above reasons, we support Chairman Bair and ask that you please retain her as our leader.”

Ms. Bair's playing down the hoopla and trying to act cool in the face of all the fan worship, however difficult that might be, given the devotion of her loyal minions.

Ms. Bair’s popularity at the FDIC is rarely matched. Morale at the agency has been low for years—ever since L. William Seidman, a former chairman, left in 1991. Ms. Bair’s graceful dominance of the regulatory response to the credit crisis gave the institution a much-needed lift.

The last time I experienced "graceful dominance," it cost me $150 an hour and still left scars. But I digress.

Ms. Flitter's observations about Ms. Bair's in-agency popularity are mirrored by some of the e-mails I've received from FDIC employees since I issued a fatwa against Ms. Bair a couple of years ago. Her employees stick up for her. They claim that she's discontinued dysfunctional personnel policies that sapped morale, and that she's turned the agency around in that respect. They claim that she's whip-smart, and that her public policy positions are well thought out. They claim that while her consumer-advocacy bias is not hidden, it comes from a caring personality, not from some ideological Kool-Aid consumption. They claim that I'm being grossly unfair to her. Finally, they claim that I wear my posterior as a hat, which is a difficult allegation to refute.

Of course, such thoughtful opposition to my viewpoint forced to make crank calls to the FDIC, along the lines of  "Is your refrigerator running?" and "Do you have Sir Walter Raleigh in a can?" Boy, those lines crack me up today as much as they did 48 years after I first started using them. They work better, though, when you're phoning a personal residence or a drug store, rather than a government agency that simply hangs up without answering the question. Actually, I no longer receive e-mail from the FDIC, but I assume the flaming bags of dog excrement left on my doorstep, and the jack-o-lantern with the knife through it and the note "Die, Infidel!" scrawled across the face that was deposited on my lawn this past Halloween, were from the same folks. With so many enemies enraged by my snark, it's hard to sort them all out.

Ms. Flitter makes some educated guesses about where Ms. Obama Bair might end up in the new administration. I think her suggestion that it's "time to share the love" with HUD is spot on. Of course, after the disastrous rein of Alphonso ("Curly") Jackson, a bowl of tepid oatmeal or a withered kumquat might be greeted with equal exaltation at HUD. Nevertheless, when it comes to promoting a housing agenda, there's no place like HUD. Just think what mischief her best buddy Barney Frank could wreak on American housing for the next four or more years with a consumer advocate like Ms. Bair over there!

I feel a Chris Matthews-like thrill going up my leg at the mere prospect.

Pushback on Freddie Mac Buybacks?

Funny thing about elephant stampedes. A herd of pachyderms might be stomping villages flat, driving the terrified villagers before it, and generally scaring the stuffing out of every mortal man and woman that crosses its path. Suddenly, the rampaging tuskers comes to a screeching halt when a great white hunter levels an elephant gun and starts blasting away.

That may be happening to one of the elephant herds in the mortgage banking business, Freddie Mac, whose irresistible force of  loan buy-back demands appears to be meeting the immovable object of JPMorgan Chase. At least, that the line of an article in today's American Banker (paid subscription required).

To make a long story short,

• the late, great Washington Mutual Savings sold loans to Fredddie Mac and serviced them for Freddie;
•  JPMorgan Chase bought Wamu;
•  Freddie Mac has demanded that JPMorgan Chase, as successor to Wamu's interest in the loans and the loan servicing, buy back the loans for various reasons (which Freddie Mac has a right to demand under its selling and servicing agreements);
•  JPMorgan Chase "may refuse to repurchase" the loans. At least, that's what Freddie Mac alleged in recent public filings.

Industry lawyers familiar with the dispute, speaking on condition of anonymity because they do work for the companies, said that whether it goes to court could depend on the legal language used by regulators in the rushed deal to rescue Wamu.

Theoretically, Freddie could terminate Wamu's servicing rights or seize the portfolio and try to find another servicer. But few companies are willing to accept any portfolio of loans with a high level of repurchase risk, observers said. Freddie also could settle the matter by putting a ceiling on its repurchase demands.

The conflict shows how the GSEs are caught between "a rock and a hard place," as one lawyer put it. Though they want to be repaid for defective-loan sales, they also need financially strong servicers to take over the portfolios of increasingly troubled originators.

Traditionally, both Freddie Mac and its big sister, Fannie Mae, have been the biggest gorillas in the jungle. If you want to sell loans to and/or service loans for either of them, then you'd better jump when they say jump. In most cases, regardless of legitimate legal defenses, most lenders who intend to stay in the mortgage lending and/or servicing business decide to accommodate the buyback demands of a GSE. Given the crisis in the mortgage markets, it's no surprise that, according to the American Banker, Freddie has tripled the amount of its repurchase demands in the past year. Unfortunately for Freddie, it's finding that many of the sellers are no longer willing to be pushovers or, even worse, the sellers may have already "rolled over" and played dead, i.e., they expired. It's tough getting a dead man to take your threats seriously.

"Historically, it's been hard to argue with Fannie and Freddie on repurchase demands because if you didn't do what they said, they could yank the servicing portfolios," said one industry lawyer. "Fannie and Freddie are experiencing what happened to the private investment banks last year, which made hundreds of millions of repurchase demands on subprime companies that they were never able to realize."

From what little is disclosed in the article about the facts, Freddie Mac's legal position appears to be strong. The Purchase and Assumption Agreement with the FDIC as Receiver for Wamu provides that JPMorgan Chase specifically assumed all mortgage servicing obligations of Wamu.

"Fannie and Freddie forever have had in their guidelines that, as a condition to accepting the transfer of servicing, the purchaser must assume the original reps and warranties," said a lawyer who represents both JPMorgan Chase and Freddie. "Chase, as an active buyer and seller of Fannie and Freddie servicing, is well aware of that. What they're saying here is that, because it's coming out of the functional equivalent of bankruptcy, they should be relieved of the repurchase liabilities."

That argument didn't work following the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s and 1990s. Why should it work any better this time around?

While an unnamed attorney is quoted as stating that JPMorgan Chase inserted language in the P&A Agreement to protect itself from buyback liabilities, I couldn't find it. Not that I looked that hard, inasmuch as I'm not being paid to do so. Perhaps a more observant reader (or a less inebriated one) will pick up the saving passage.

Regardless of the legal positions, it's interesting to finally see a case where the financial strength of an opponent of a GSE is impressive enough, and the need for its servicing support sufficiently important to the GSEs, that a GSE can't run roughshod over a bank and force-feed it loan buybacks.

We'll be watching this little tussle with interest.

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

While most eyes are focused on the FUBAR named "TARP," those of us who inhabit the rabbit warren known as "Bank Lawyer’s Blog" have been head-snapping at less-noticed events that we think might provide "signs-of-the-times" markers for the tea-leaf reader in all of us. Some of those events have to do with certain state and federal bank regulators deciding that now is simply a great time to cash in their chips, pop a Tecate, and head for Cabo.

One of the more notable national players to take an early leave is OTS Director John Reich. Last Monday, Reich told the American Bankers Association (paid subscription required) that he’s as done as an over-grilled sirloin and that he’ll leave the OTS "sooner than late".”

Mr. Reich, who has led the OTS since August 2005, said his biggest regret at the agency was failing to curb no- and low-documentation loans.

"As a former banker raised believing in the fundamental five C's of credit and fully documented loan files, the notion of low- and no-doc loans has been abhorrent to me," he said at the ABA's annual convention in San Francisco

"I regret that I and my colleagues did not act to change these practices, which frankly had been in place for a number of years and seemed to present no material issues until the bottom of the housing market fell out," Mr. Reich said. "Nevertheless, it's what I have the most personal regret about."

It’s not exactly refreshing when a regulator admits that he screwed up after he’s announced his exit. What would be more impressive would be to see one admit "I blew it, big time" while he or she has no intention of doing anything other than staying onboard and trying to make things right. He’d likely be booted by Obama in January or soon thereafter, so maybe it makes no difference in his case.

Reich also hoped that any regulatory reorganization would preserve a small bank industry. Certainly, state bank regulators, whose institutions are primarily smaller, state-chartered community banks, would echo that sentiment.

Colorado Banking Commissioner would be one of them. Well, he would be, except he, too, announced his resignation last week.

Richard Fulkerson is retiring from his position as Colorado’s bank commissioner, the state Department of Regulatory Agencies said Thursday.

Fulkerson’s last day with the department is Nov. 20. Colorado Securities Commissioner Fred Joseph has been named acting bank commissioner until Fulkerson’s successor is appointed.

Unlike Reich, Fulkerson had no reported advice for his successors, the legislature, or the industry. Having been a supervisory agent for the OTS in Topeka, Kansas (where I first ran into him many moons ago), he likely decided that he’s had enough fun with cratering and imploding banks and thrifts to last a lifetime and would like to spend his remaining years pumping his liver up to the size of a basketball with shots of Jim Beam and a Budweiser chaser. Can’t say that I blame him.

Fred Joseph is a reasonable man. I imagine that he'll be more than happy to give up his "acting" title to the next sucker qualified candidate who is appointed to take Fulkerson's place permanently.

It’s interesting that people who have experience in surviving the last big financial institution crisis are looking at the handwriting on the wall and deciding "Enough." "Interesting" in the same sense that it must have been interesting to the passengers of the Titanic to watch crew members step smartly into one of the few lifeboats and shove off. While many of the most visible bank regulators are jockeying for position to "control" the bailout and its aftermath, others are quietly muttering to one another, "Row! Row! Row!"