Interest increases in Bair

Sheila Bair must be tempted to tell America: "I told you so." She is a woman few people have ever heard of, but who has just been listed at number two in the Forbes list of the World's 100 Most Powerful Women because she is the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC).

That means that she is in charge of the Washington agency which insures bank deposits, and so, ultimately, stands as the final guardian of Ordinary Joe's savings account in the Main Street bank.

This is suddenly considered such an important a job that Forbes, the financial magazine that loves to rank the rich and powerful, catapulted Bair into second spot - only one behind top-rated Angela Merkel, and way ahead of Condoleezza Rice at seven - in her first appearance on the list. "She debuts in second place," says Forbes, "as she tries to stave off financial panic amid a worldwide credit crisis." 

It should be noted that the list came out two days before Republican presidential candidate John McCain named Sarah Palin as his 'Veep', a wild card who might end up as easily the world's most powerful woman if McCain does win in November.

Bair, in the meantime, is perfectly, if ironically, qualified to play scold to the spoiled sons and daughters of the world's affluent consumer societies who are now trembling before the prospect of global economic meltdown. This is because her only public appearance before the Forbes accolade has been as the author of an illustrated children's book dedicated to the idea of teaching the old-fashioned virtues of saving money.

It is titled Rock, Brock and the Savings Shock, and is available today on Amazon, discounted to a mere $10.95.  It tells the simple story we all wish we had learned before re-mortgaging the house to buy the Cadillac: Rock and Brock are twins, and each week Grandpa gives them pocket money in return for chores. Brock saves, Rock spends. Rock soon has a giddy $500, while Brock is in tears because he has nothing. Don't cry! soothes author Bair: "It's never too late to start saving."

Bair, 55, was born in Kansas and won degrees in business and law before joining the Washington staff of Kansas Senator Bob Dole, a Republican who ran for President against Bill Clinton in 1996, and lost. Married, with two children, she worked her way up from the Treasury to Vice President of Government Relations on Wall Street, before becoming Professor of Financial Regulatory Policy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2002.

President Dubya Bush gave her the FDIC job in July 2006. The sub-prime mortgage crisis blew up a year later, and last week Bair presided over her 10th bank collapse of the year so far. "More banks," she says, "will come on the list as credit problems worsen."

Rock, who bought all the toys, is in trouble. But Bair is an American optimist: at the end her book, both boys retire as millionaires, lesson learnt. ·