Maybe it’s best that he doesn’t staff the Treasury, especially if he intends to staff it with people like this.
The acting director of the Office of Thrift Supervision has been put on leave pending a review of the agency’s role in the backdating of capital infusions by some banks, the agency said Thursday evening.
OTS said in a surprise statement that Scott Polakoff, who has been serving as acting director of the OTS, would be replaced by OTS Chief Counsel John Bowman during the review by the Treasury Department.
The OTS, a division of the Treasury Department, has come under fire after it was revealed last year that the agency had allowed IndyMac Bancorp Inc. (IDMCQ) to backdate a May 2008 $18 million capital infusion to the first quarter. IndyMac failed a few months later, a collapse that cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. $10.7 billion, the costliest failure in U.S. history.
A subsequent review of the issue by the OTS uncovered four other cases of backdating by banks, cases which the agency said in a January letter to U.S. lawmakers “were not acceptable to current OTS standards.” Allowing the banks to backdate capital infusions to earlier quarters could allow firms to avoid regulatory penalties for having too little capital.
And who exactly is Scott Polakoff? He’s the guy who was supposed to be watching what AIG’s fianacial products division was doing.
But it turns out Mr. Bernanke was not quite accurate when he said “no oversight.” He made that statement on March 3rd.
Just two days later a man hardly anybody has ever heard of explained to yet another Senate committee that — hold the presses — there WAS a regulator for the Financial Products unit of AIG. … That man was Scott Polakoff and he’s the Acting Director of the Office of Thrift Supervision (we call that OTS). OTS is the regulator for thrifts and savings banks. Polakoff has told any committee that will listen that OTS had responsibility for AIG FP. Why was OTS involved? Because among the seventy odd companies and units that make up AIG, one of them happened to be a Savings & Loan Bank. …
“We were clearly responsible as a consolidated regulator for FP,” says Polakoff, and adds, “We, in 2004, should have taken an entirely different approach than what we wound up taking regarding the credit default swaps.” By now, the term credit default swap is practically a barbershop term, but basically it’s just a sort of insurance policy on another financial product like a mortgage-backed security (often stuffed with foreclosed mortgages, as we have all learned to our sorrow).
Well isn’t that special? The guy who let AIG do whatever they wanted is also being accused of coking the books for IndyMac. And Obama wanted him for director of OTS. Welcome to Hopenadchange.
